Between Tiger Meat and Inhaler

While I was doing my morning ward work one day, I overheard a visitor talking to the patient's mother:

" I think tiger meat is good for asthma. That what I heard from my friend."

" Yeah? But tiger meat is hard to get. You have to look hard for it, and I heard it is pricey too."

" Otherwise, my grandparents used to serve me crocodile meat when I had asthmatic during childhood. It does cure my asthma. Until now, I never had any attack."

Common cultural practice and medicine is inseparable. As a doctor, you can't stop the patient from practicing what they believe. You can only suggest, but you can't decide for them. Tiger meat, crocodile meat, squirrel meat, termites and even the human placenta are still being use as a treatment modality for bronchial asthma. Do they have a role? Certainly. Do they have efficacy? I am not sure.

Generally, the traditional medicines are cultural bound, passed on from generations to generations and believed to be effective in a way. They are not clinically tested to show their efficacy. The rarer the item, the more therapeutic it become. When does the traditional and modern medicine cross their path? Generally none. We can't force people to take our advice. We can treat a person unless the person want us to treat them. If they take only tiger meat for asthma and be cured of asthma, good for them. It they come in with asthma attack and request for treatment, we will still accepts them the same way.

Everyone has their choice, this I have to constantly remind myself, so not to impose my own value on them.