The Urban Permaculture Farm Magazine

Patti invited me to contribute to her ezine and I eagerly accepted because I know that what she is doing is so important. I am a practicing physician in Boston, a Medical School professor, and a researcher. I find that teaching is mostly a process of "enabling" students, providing them with resources for learning by themselves But the fun part of teaching and writing is giving a few specifics that might spark interest and give the reader just enough energy to try something on their own.

Research is a process of attempting something, either something that you have not tried before or something that noone has tried before. That is how new knowledge is created. A lot of the fun in research is sharing ones findings with others'. It is beautiful to see how Garden Girl has empowered novices and ancient gardeners like me to renew their efforts at urban gardening through example . The more examples, the more likely to find something to spark interest, and just one thing is enough.

Growing up in a tiny hamlet nestled in a Hudson River valley, I can remember only once when any of my family took "pills" for illnesses. My dad was a physician, one of the first immigrants from Haiti, and my mom was a schoolteacher of mixed-blood Native American ancestry. Both of them turned first to "food, fields, and forest" to keep us healthy and hasten recovery from illnesses. I later realized that many of the things they were using as "medicines" were actually just things which were foods.

Turning it around, that meant that many of the things we think of as 'foods" are also medicines!! In fact, if we think of medicines as things which get into the body and have an effect on our physiology, then most foods fit the bill. The boundary between food and medicine, between dietary supplement and medicine, between spices and herbs and medicine can be murky. From time-to-time I will present you with some interesting things I have run into since the 1940s. I will try to make them relevant to the urban gardener, and hope you will try new things as a result, or just look at things you have taken for granted in a different way.

What they Didn't Teach at Medical School by Kathryn Hayward, M.D.

While I was in residency training at Carney Hospital in Dorchester, Mass, I worked part-time at Polaroid Corporation, in their Occupational Medicine Department. One day, Mr. Jones came to see me for right foot pain. He was pleasant, thin and athletic, and ran several miles every day. He was honest with me: "I need to run. My job here is really stressful, and running helps me relieve stress."

I did an xray of his foot and learned he had a bone spur on his heel, a little growth of bone that came from the trauma of pounding the pavement. I felt the relief of having a secure diagnosis, and confidently told him that to relieve his pain, he would have to rest and ice the foot and take anti-inflammatory medicines. A look of panic flashed across his face. "You don't understand, doctor. I have to run." I patiently repeated to him my advice and let him know our time was up. I watched him limp down the hall.

Mr. Jones became a weekly visitor to my office. He was polite but increasingly irritated by his lack of improvement. He kept running; he couldn't help it. Soon his left hip began to hurt from running off kilter. His pleasant demeanor became one of mounting frustration. I referred him to an orthopedist, who injected cortisone and told him to rest the foot. But Mr. Jones just couldn't take a break from running.

A couple of weeks later, Mr. Jones entered my office walking normally. I expressed my happiness at seeing him pain free, but his facial expression was angry. "I ought to sue you for malpractice." I sat back in my chair and listened to his words as they spilled out. "You and the specialist didn't help me at all. Finally I tried acupuncture, and my foot and hip were better within three treatments. Why didn't you tell me that acupuncture would have saved me all these months of pain and aggravation?"

I was stunned. I had little to say, and mumbled something about not knowing anything about acupuncture. I lamely expressed my happiness that he was feeling better, and he left my office in strong, angry strides.

With humility, I phoned the New England School of Acupuncture in Watertown, Mass. When the secretary answered the phone, I said, "I'm an internist and need to speak with someone who can teach me about how acupuncture can help my patients." "Oh yes, let me give you the phone number of our Dean, whose name is Dr. Tsai."