Fallacies of esoteric medicine

Anti-aging medicine: fallacies, realities, imperatives.

LAST year’s double special sections of the Journal on ‘‘Anti-Aging Medicine’’ featured several contributions from the distinguished experimentalist Leonard Hayflick. Among these was ‘‘‘Anti-Aging’ is an Oxymoron,’’(1) which ends with a question that clearly lays out the importance of the subject of these issues: since there is an ‘‘almost universal belief by geriatricians that the greatest risk...

Thirteen follies and fallacies about alternative medicine.

T use of alternative medicine (AM)—treatments such as herbs or massage therapy—has long been a part of healthcare in many regions of the world “to complement mainstream medicine by contributing to a common whole, by satisfying a demand not met by orthodoxy or by diversifying the conceptual frameworks of medicine” [1]. What AM cannot do is replace conventional treatment, particularly when it com...

Esoteric Buddhism TITLE iii

Veterinary Acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine: Facts and Fallacies

oday’s interest in a diverse group of scientifically unproven therapies, collectively referred to as alternative or complementary medicine, has brought increased attention to culturally based therapeutic practices, including acupuncture and other aspects of traditional Chinese medicine. Mystic and ancient healing practices are worthy of study, both for their historical interest and because they...

Theuth Versus Thamus: The Esoteric Plato Revisited

The distinction between esoteric and exoteric readings of Plato will be revisited in this article with respect to two esoteric approaches: the German Tübingen School and the American Straussians (i.e., those interpreters who have been inspired by the work of Leo Strauss). There appears to be a joint motivation for these two approaches, namely, the critique of writing in the dialogue Phaedrus an...