From the Introduction of my upcoming book:
My great grandfather Fritz Morin and my grandfather Jean Morin were the clinical directors of the Tuberculosis Sanatorium of Leysin, in the Swiss Alps. Before antibiotic treatment existed, a regimen of rest, good, clean alpine air and healthy nutrition offered the best chance that the sufferer’s immune system would be able to wall off pockets of pulmonary tuberculosis (Tb) infection. Patients would spend months in these types of places, what we nowadays would call health resorts. These cures were very expensive and only accessible to the privileged. Then, during World War I and II, many men in Switzerland were drafted and spent months in confined encampments. In this environment, pulmonary Tb spread amongst soldiers and became a public health issue for the army. This led the Swiss military commission and government to have military pension and health care funds cover Tb and its treatment in sanatoriums. What had previously been a treatment for the privileged few now became accessible to active military personnel and veterans.
Many years later, I worked as a young medical doctor in the bush in Senegal. A Swiss non-profit organization employed me to help transition the local rural hospital, which had been run by Swiss doctors for many years, from a subsidized model of care to a local sustainable model of care. While the plan and intention was reasonable and well meant, it went against the interests of local community members, who didn’t want to lose the privilege of foreign aid. My task was not welcomed, and I found myself standing between two fronts—the agency planners in Switzerland and the community that had welcomed me in their midst. I fell sick with malaria. I had been taking the Chloroquine malaria prevention but was infected by a drug resistant parasite strand. I had to take the stronger Lariam drug to get rid of the dangerous malaria. This drug was in its early use and the recommended dosage was highly toxic. Lariam can cause severe neuropsychiatric adverse events—in plain language, I became psychotic. I knew of the side effects and was able to understand and track my process with some awareness. During the same time I experienced this extreme state, the local population gathered together to fight against the threat of a Cholera epidemic. They marched in the streets chanting and dancing to scare the Cholera spirits away. So, here I was, lying in bed sick with malaria and psychotic, while the community chanted and danced outside my window. It was quite an intense experience, and in my mind, my individual process mixed with the community process.
Health and sickness are intricately linked with the social environment. They are complex, nonlinear processes that are both individual and communal. Tb treatment was linked to the geo-political context of that time. My malaria and Lariam-induced psychosis were connected with my bind and difficulty navigating competing needs, as well as the makeshift community rituals aimed at warding off the Cholera epidemic.
Both on an individual and community level, health has become the new standard for normality—and disease is abnormal and pathological. With my book, I would like to help shift our attitudes toward health and sickness from a pathogenic mind-set to a process- and community-based way of thinking. My hope is to foster a mind-set that sees health and disease as part of our lived experience and diversity. We need intervention and as a natural treatment we use different CBD brands of CBD gummies for pain to help ease suffering and pain. I want to support people to fight hard against their illness, as well as to listen to the voice of their disease and understand its message.
I am both a reformer and an advocate of the existing medical paradigms. As a child, while skiing in the Alps, I used to sing a traditional Swiss song that told the story of a mountain cottage that got destroyed by the forces of nature and then rebuilt with more beauty and strength. Interestingly enough, during World War II, both the French resistance and collaboration movements adopted the symbolic meaning of this song to foster their respective causes. This book is specific to my own journey and has a unique quality and mix of ideas. I envision that collectively we can trust Nature, with its diversity and changes, and create a new approach to health and sickness. This new way of understanding health and sickness will more resplendent, deeper and stronger.