Modern Western tradition of illness is to submit or deposit a malfunctioning Body to a hospital for fix-up. The Body spends a lot of time unwatched1 in solitary isolation with occasional visitors - “healthcare providers” or family and friends. The Body is devoid of a tribe, meaning, tradition, dignity, or modesty. The Body is a sum of numerical and image parts.2 Healthcare providers manipulate the numbers and images to manage a substance called life. Life equates to a number in a software spreadsheet.
There is a young man dying in a hospital now. He hails from India, stuck in America because of Covid lockdowns, then the birth of his second child, then a diagnosis of lung cancer that spread to his brain, lungs, liver, and bones. The will of God was for him to be long dead.3 Man pays no heed. His spine broke to be cemented in place. A clot in his lung appeared to be dissolved. His skin disintegrated because of cancer treatment. He moans and screams in pain. He is nauseous. He forces morsels of cornflakes and sips of Coca Cola into himself on an odd day.4 His in-laws attempted to nourish him with celery juice.5 He loses control of his bowels, much to his embarrassment. The indignity of strangers handling him like a piece of meat adds to his humiliation. “He is a very modest man,” his father-in-law explains. He gets accused of asking for too much and being lazy because he is used to having servants. He does not have the American spirit of fighting, of doing everything for himself. “If he would just apply himself…” He spends most of his time alone, in agony or oblivion. His parents died when he was young. His American family has expectations “healthcare providers” will dispense health to him because young men do not die in America. His visitors visit. He suffers alone with beauty and dignity afforded to men who come of tradition.
There is a young man in a hospital who survived a car accident that killed his father who was his caregiver. The bereaved mother and wife accepted the will of God. The family is of Armenian origin of a relatively recent wave of immigration. The Armenian community admitted themselves to the hospital the moment the young man was delivered there. Fellow men take turns guarding and attending to him at all times of day and night. Staff is forewarned not to bring hospital food trays into the room - “this is not food, it is inedible”. Women of the community supply all the meals he eats. The staff reports they have never seen so many visitors, not even for a high ranking city official who was recently hospitalized.6
In a culture that valorizes war, the band of brothers disbanded to fight disease. Illness is the lot of kamikaze, a lone fighter on a suicide mission. Most healing is a traditional way of consoling, caring, and comforting people while they heal, and most sick-care a form of tolerance extended to the afflicted. Only those cultures survive that provide a viable code that is adapted to a group's genetic make-up, to its history, to its environment, and to the peculiar challenges represented by competing groups of neighbors. (Ivan Illich, Medical Nemesis.)
The tradition of healing is alive in American hospitals. You can see men of all walks of life, of all tribes, and incomes make the illness of their fellow man their own. They move into hospital wards and do everything that living entails in proportion to the inability of the sick man to live. If he cannot brush his teeth, they do it for him. If he cannot call for help, they look for it in the features of his face and his eyes. If he cannot eat, they feed him. If he cannot clean himself, they do it for him. They bring food the sick man is accustomed to or say a prayer that restores his spirit. They become one body, being there, feeling, hurting, and healing together.
There is no expert or professional who is trained to do it for a stranger he does not know and cannot know, given the limitations set by hospital routines and protocols. If anything, these traditional healers provide valuable instruction to the experts who do not know any better than mangle and poison bodies. It is the duty of a traditional healer that gives him the right to ask of a professional to do what he does. The standard set by tradition is high. Those who relinquish their duty to care for their fellow man not only lose the right to ask but eventually do not know what to ask for. Professionals set standard of (un)care that is indecently low.
It is the height of stupidity and futility to think of changing man. To think of changing man on his deathbed is beastly villainy. Attending to man in illness is proportionate to where he comes from and where he is headed. In many traditions of healing women take over the care of the sick and the dying.7 They maintain the rhythm of living, no matter how unable the sick man is of living, for as long as his heart is beating and he breathes the air they share. It is a fine proportion between sensible infliction of discomfort and pain while not making the sick man suffer more than he is capable of. This proportion is not an algorithm. It is knowledge that comes from discernment of the unknown - man who is in front of you now and who is whole with you.
Electronic monitors have replaced a watchful woman. Women used to care for the sick and the dying. This traditions persists till this day.
“A part” is one of the most unfortunate untrue metaphors that is used frequently in modern science. There are no parts.
This level of illness without modern medicine would have resulted in a timely death. Modern medicine manufactures untimely death by prolonging the suffering of the dying. In any tradition it is blasphemy. Today untimely death is an accomplishment of progress for “the greater good” that defies and denies reality in front of you.
There is nothing wrong with eating the food the dying man likes the most. If the goal is to sustain and heal, you would not be giving garbage to the sick. You would adjust your traditional cooking to accommodate the needs of a sick man. In this case, you would seek the regional dishes for the sick where this man comes from. His family should be doing this. No institution can fulfill this duty.
Juicing is one of the strangest things people do. Why you would give a sick or dying man water with celery flavor is beyond my understanding. Among liquids, meat or bone broths give more sustenance, but this type of food must be familiar and acceptable to a sick man, otherwise it defeats the purpose by causing more suffering.
Routine consumption of garbage in lieu of food sets a trap. When man gets sick, he has no knowledge of food. The only food that gives him pleasure is garbage that keeps him sick and makes him worse when it becomes critically important to eat food, not garbage. Forcing food on him becomes torture that is counterproductive to healing. There is no solution to this problem once you arrive at that point.
The paucity of detail is explained by the fact that this story was told to me by an Armenian colleague who visits this young man before and after work in a different part of the hospital. I have not seen it for myself. I have witnessed this on a less grand scale.
Many men of all ages increasingly take on the role of traditional healers in the United States today. It is more common in younger men.