Great Construction

“Medical Attention”
Medical Science Fragments Twenty-four

     The phrase “medical attention” has been used in connection with sickness and disease since antiquity, but the words just do not seem to fit. The ideograms used to write “medical attention” in Japanese mean “to apply the hand,” but if sickness could be cured by merely applying the hand, sickness and disease would receive no more attention than a fart. But no, contemporary medical science uses medicines and injections, and various other material therapies, so I think the use of the phrase, “apply the hand,” that is, “medical attention” is inappropriate. It could be imagined that the phrase came about in the sense that a hand was passed over the patient or that the patient was touched in some way as the healer gave the patient medicine to ingest and that the touching was meant to be interpreted by the patient as “medicine,” but from our perspective, even a temporary or brief use of physical medicine still does not cure sickness and disease but rather only aggravates the condition. As the effect is to make sickness and disease chronic, use of the phrase “medical attention” should be abolished.

Eikô, Issue 187, December 17, 1952
 translated by cynndd