![]() ![]() ![]() There is a beautiful exterior deck with views of green hills. But hospital policy - not just here but probably everywhere - forbids that. I long to sit or walk in the sun with the longing of an animal. Think of how a sick dog or cat lies in the sun. Given the lifesaving role of Vitamin D, and of fresh air, as pre-modern healers as late as Florence Nightingale argued, this feature of almost all hospitals (and sanitaria, and mental institutions) before the 20th century, had measurable value that cannot be overstated, not just, as Nightingale put it, for the mind, but also for the body. It also allowed recovering patients to sit in the healing sun, and to walk at their own paces in an ever-varying landscape. But other aspects of how older medical practices helped to support patients’ immune systems in fighting recovery, have been lost to time, unavailable now not just to this but to all or to most modern hospitals, and, being that I am a patient still in acute distress, I miss them.Īs my immune system fights on, now for a week, I keep fantasizing having access to aspects of 19th century healing that are no longer available to anyone.ĭid you know, for instance, that hospitals - which were (since the Middle Ages) originally in the West founded by the Church, and often by branches of nunneries - always had a ‘hospital garden’, integrated right into the architecture, whether in courtyards or as the exterior grounds? This did not just provide herbs for medicaments. I am absurdly grateful for the antibiotics with which my system is continually being flushed here via IV, of course. Infections - which I am battling - were a major part of the fight against disease in pre-antibiotic England and America in the 19th c. It is truly a 19th century kind of recovery…while everyone in this hospital has been absolutely delightful to me and the nurses could not be kinder, my surgeon is wonderful, and the level of care is incredibly attentive, I am having a profound experience of how modern hospitals, even the very best of them, over time, simply by the nature of their inexorable systems, are like a vortex that makes it hard for a longtime patient in acute care not to be tempted to simply give up and die. I have some ideas about how to share earlier unpublished work with you that I think you will enjoy, while I heal, so you are still hearing from me. That may be TMI already, but I tell you everything that I think is germane - as any nonfiction writer should do, I believe, or at least those in my genre of transparency. ![]() An acute infection was involved somewhere along the way, for which I am still in the hospital, being treated. I was found to have a ruptured appendix, and in the morning I sustained an appendectomy. Last Monday I suffered, in ways I won’t trouble you by describing, and our wonderful friend and the gifted healer Dr Henry Ealy advised me to check in to the local ER. Wolf's June 26, 2023, Substack post below.īeloved readers, I’ve been silent for some time, and I feel I owe you an explanation. We want to update you, our friends and supporters, about an important situation in our Dail圜lout family. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |