Notes on Swamp Fever, Flash bees, and Complementary Medicine · 10:37pm Oct 1st, 2017
In addition to being an exciting Fluttershy adventure, A Health of Information gives us an abundance of new data on the nature of health care, and the health risks of nature, in Equestria. There seem to be more than a few pages missing from Meadowbrook’s journal, so here are my notes.
Poisonous flowers are hardly an oddity, yet the bloom responsible for Swamp Fever has a rather interesting life cycle, infecting ponies with its seed, which then turns them into trees! Perhaps because ponies think it’s okay to live in trees, trees think it’s okay to take over ponies’ bodies?
It does not affect the flash bees. Presumably the plant needs them for pollination. It does seem a bit of a leap of faith to conclude that the cure will lie in the honey. Maybe the bees acquire a resistance to this harmful magic by ingesting small quantities from the honey they eat as pupae. Of course Equestrian biology may not work like that. The method of pacifying the male bees would be of no use for ordinary bees, as the drones don’t have stingers. It’s the female workers you need to watch out for. Disguising yourself as a queen bee before entering a hive might well lead to a fight to the death with the resident queen. But Flash bees are evidently rather different from ordinary honey bees. I wonder if they play a role in pollinating the zap apple trees.
Concerning heath care, Equestria clearly goes for a complementary approach. When ponies (or zebras) are sick, they have a range of options available. Hospitals equipped with technology such as x-ray imaging exist alongside traditional herbal and magical remedies dispensed by the likes of Zecora.
This reminded me of a good science book I read last year, the exploration of Indian medicine by Aarathi Prasad: The Bonesetter’s Waiting Room. India is a country with world-class hospitals and medical schools churning out professionals who fill job vacancies in the US and UK. Yet it is also where millions rely on state-funded systems of traditional medicine like Ayurveda, Yoga, Siddha, and others.[1] Dr Prasad admits that her book cannot cover the full scope, but tells a series of engaging stories of researchers finding innovative solutions to local challenges, doctors working in seemingly impossible conditions in urban slums and jungle camps, and a few down-right weird ideas such as swallowing a live fish as a drug-delivery method.
[1] Many of these treatments have little or no evidence they are clinically effective. Yet before playing the arrogant westerner and attacking the Indian authorities for wasting their money on pseudoscience and quackery, it would be wise to learn a bit of the background and challenges of providing healthcare in a country of 1.3 billion people, many living in extreme poverty. For one thing, there are nowhere nearly enough MBBS graduates to serve the country. India is complicated.
Very intriguing post and with regards to India and unproven work, there is much to be said for both the Placebo effect as well as there's lots of things that started as natural medicine that we have gone on to prove actually have a benefit.
Slowly, Watson on Chip and Print On Demand personalised compounds are heading towards handheld sizes?
I can't help but think that some of the symptoms of swamp fever come from secondary infections. Pollen that germinates in an equine body and transmutes it into a tree can't be doing pleasant things to the host's immune system. That would also explain how seemingly distinct symptoms like bubble sneezing could be caused by other ailments.
Supplemental
Complementary
Alternative
Medicine:
¡SCAM!
Scam is medicine, which at best, has not been proven to work, or has been proven not to work. Some scam, like homœopathy, is merely useless (seeking worthless treatment, at best delays real treatment, or at worst, prevents it), but most scam is toxic, and often bad for wildlife (traditional chinese medicine uses endangered species). Scam proven to work is simply medicine:
Science-Based Medicine