TMS Understanding Has Been Around for a Long Time!

Hi Everyone,

I ran across this blog entry from Dr. David Clarke, author of They Can't Find Anything Wrong. The blog summarizes the lecture of a physician, Dr. Peabody from 1925 in which he clearly expresses his understanding of "psychosomatic illness" and its treatment. I have highlighted parts of Dr. Clarke's summary below.

This is more evidence (and Dr. Sarno tells us this) that the knowledge of TMS in Western medicine once clearly existed ---especially in very sensitive, gifted doctors--- and was "lost."

Andy B.

The Blog Post:

http://www.stressillness.com/blog/?p=1569

Andy's highlights of Dr. Peabody's 1925 understanding of "functional disturbances" (our TMS/PPD)

The causes:

"Sorrow, disappointment, anxiety, self-distrust, thwarted ideals or ambitions in social, business or personal life, and particularly what are called maladaptations to these conditions—these are among the commonest and simplest factors that initiate and perpetuate the functional disturbances."

Self-perpetuating "nerve pathways:"

"As with all nervous reactions, the longer the process goes on, or the more frequently it goes on, the easier it is for it to go on. The unusual nervous track becomes an established path. After a time, the symptom and the subjective discomfort that it produces come to occupy the center of the picture, and the causative factors recede into a hazy background."

The treatment:

"Sometimes it is well to explain to the patient, by obvious examples, how it is that emotional states may bring about symptoms similar to his own, so that he will understand what you are driving at and will cooperate with you."

"Often the best way is to go back to the very beginning and try to find out the circumstances of the patient’s life at the time the symptoms first began.

Best practices in healing:

"The good physician knows his patients through and through, and his knowledge is bought dearly. Time, sympathy and understanding must be lavishly dispensed, but the reward is to be found in that personal bond which forms the greatest satisfaction of the practice of medicine."

 

That is really interesting. Thanks for sharing, Andy!

 

Great find, thanks for sharing, how can stuff like this get "lost". Amazing, lets hope evidence like this getting shared, along with our modern day understanding of how much our brains and connected to our bodies will help to get this syndrome rediscovered and back into mainstream medical practice.

 

The part that impressed me most about the 1925 paper by Dr. Peabody is his advice to medical students to become interested in their patients situation and life events, almost an impossibility these days since "time is money."
Thank you for sharing.