From a speech made by H. R. H. The Prince of Wales at the British Medical Association, Jan. 1983.

I have often thought that one of the less attractive traits of various professional bodies and institutions is the deeply ingrained suspicion and outright hostility which can exist towards anything unorthodox or unconventional. I suppose it is inevitable that something which is different should arouse strong feelings on the part of the majority whose conventional wisdom is being challenged or, in a more social sense, whose way of life and customs are being insulted by something rather alien. I suppose, too,, that human nature is such that we are frequently prevented from seeing that what is taken for today's unorthodoxy is probably going to be tomorrow's convention. Perhaps we just have to accept it is God's will that the unorthodox individual is doomed years of frustration, ridicule and failure in order to act out his role in the scheme of things, until his day arrives and mankind is ready to receive his message; a message which he probably finds hard to explain himself, but which he knows comes from a far deeper source than conscious thought.

The renowned 16th century healer, Paracelsus, was just such an individual. He is probably remembered more for his fight against orthodoxy than for his achievements in the medical field. As a result of his unorthodox approach to medicine in his time he was equated with the damnable Dr. Faustus. Of the barbers, surgeons and pharmacists he complained that "they begrudge the honour I won healing Princes and noblement and they say my powers come from the devil!' And yet in his day and age he was operating as a one man British Medical Association, crit icizing the abuse amongst pharmacists and attacking the quack remedies - vipers' blood powder, unicorn horn, and so on. In 1527, by an act of which I am sure today's younger doctors would be proud, he burnt the famous textbook of medieval medicine, the Canon of Avicenna, which became a symbol of rebellion against pedantry and unthinking acceptance of ancient doctrines.

Paracelsus believed that the good doctor's therapeutic success largely depends on his ability to inspire the patient with confidence and to mobilize his will to health.

I know that there are a considerable number of doctors who operate by these kinds of basic principles, because several have written to me, but nevertheless the modem science of medicine still tends to be based, as George Engel writes, "on the notion of the body as a machine, of disease as the consequence of breakdown of the machine, and of the doctor's task as repairer of the machine." By concentrating on smaller and smaller fragments of the body, modem medicine perhaps loses sight of the patient as a whole human being, and by reducing health to mechanical functioning it is no longer able to deal with the phenomenon of healing,

And here I come back to my original point. The term "healer" is viewed with suspicion and the concepts of health and healing are probably not generally discussed enough in medical schools. But to reincorporate the notion of healing into the practice of medicine does not nesessarily mean that medical science will have to be less scientific.

No one of course could be stupid enough to deny the enormous benefits which the advances of medical science in this century have conferred upon us all. But nevertheless the fact remains that contemporary medicine as a whole tends to be fascinated by the objective, statistical, computerized approach to the healing of the sick. If disease is regarded as an objective problem isolated from all personal factors, then surgery plus more and more powerful drugs must be the answer. Already the cost of drugs supplied to patients by the National Health Service alone is well over 12,000 million a year. It is frightening how dependent upon drugs we are all becoming and how easy it is for doctors to prescribe them as the universal panacea for our ills.

The last word on this subject remains with Paracelsus, whose name should be synonymous with the common health, which I have been asked to toast this evening. With all the conviction of a man who follows his inner voice, he made a desperate supplication that "would we humans knew our hearts in truth, nothing on earth would be impossible for us."

Process for the the Extraction of Oil of Iron

By Baron ANDREA MAZZARIO, Ph.D.
Prof. University of Minitoka

Some natural Pyrite must be finely ground to a light powder.

The powdered Pyrite is then dissolved in nitric (HN0₃). The acid should not be diluted too much. Care must be taken because the reaction generates heat: it is therefore slow at the beginning but increases in speed with time, generating a lot of foam that may pour out of the container (ACID)! 'The reaction generates also brown colored poisonous nitrous gases: it has to be conducted in open space or under fume hood. The solution of the Pyrite is never complete: some sulphur and some impurities of the mineral remain undissolved.

The acid solution is filtered. In this way a brown-reddish liquid is obtained.

The Iron is then precipitated from the solution with Ammonium Carbonate. This may be used (with caution) in powdered form: it will dissolve while generating some gas and will slowly neutralize the acidity of the solution. When the solution becomes basic, the Iron will start to precipitate as Iron Hydroxide (Fe 0H₃). this process is similar to the precipitation of Kermes, but there is no generation of dangerous gases like Hydrogen Sulphide.

The Iron Precipitate has to be allowed time to settle, be decanted, filtered and washed. The final dry powder(reddish-brown, mostly Iron Hydoxide (Fe OH₃) is then used for the extraction.

The menstruum used for the extraction is commercial acetone. In order to obtain better results it may be "sharpened" by digestion with (NH₄Cl). This digestion (taking some weeks) will give the acetone a yelloworange color. Clear acetone must be obtained from the yellow one by distillation. This clear one may then be used for the extraction.

The extraction for the Oil of Iron may be done using a soxhlet extractor or by simple digestion of the Iron Hydroxide with Acetone. Different speeds were observed in the coloring of the tincture: in one instance the acetone was already light orange after the first pouring in the Soxhlet, in another instance, almost no color was noticable after one full week of extraction.

After the extraction or digestion, the menstruum must be filtered and the acetone must be distilled out of it. If this process is done in a water bath (at best in a Rotavapor) it will be noticed that a relevant part of the menstruum will not distil] over, even when the menstruum was not deeply colored.

The oily substance that does not distill over is an immature oil of iron. It may be ripened by digestion with Iron Hydroxide, or by circulation. By ripening, the substance will become deeper in color and more oily.

After this ripening process the oily substance has to be filtered again. The most volatile portion of it should be distilled with the help of vacuum. What remains is a deep red oil that floats on water and is dissolved by alcohol.

Under vacuum, with higher temperature (ca. 200^oC) and using a retort, a lighter red oil may be distilled over from the red oil obtained preceedingly, leaving back a resinous red substance. More oil may be obtained by digesting this resinous substance with alcohol.

The oil has a strong scent. When it is digested and cleaned different times with alcohol it gets a more pleasant sweet flavor.

by Alan Sherry

The last one hundred years has seen a magnificent expansion of knowledge concerning many aspects of nature. Much of this new data needs to be interpreted and written down in an exploratory way for the lay readers. Ills task has hardly begun except in the fields relating to physics. There is not yet anything in print like a TAO of biology or any work which merges together energy and the physical sciences surrounding living phenomenon.

The area of focus for this article is the advancing new studies about the living synthesis of matter and energy inside the organism of man and woman. All students and scientists choose their own spectrum of studies and interests out of the multiplex array of natures mysteries. Many have a specific type of language to learn and use, scientific or otherwise, complex or not, with which to express that which they know and/or understand. While the following is only one among many ways of viewing the biological nature of man, it has the merit of removing the emphasis on a too materialistic outlook and placing attention on both the tangible and intangible aspects of life. Certainly this is a pleasing aesthetic concept and may be found to represent the scientific reality closely enough to need discussion among those interested. After a century of mere data accumulation a few attempts at piecing together some of the meanings involved should be welcomed.

New techniques and devices for experiment have allowed intensive probing into the very heart of living matter. But substance and energy involved in the processes of life have been brought into focus by various means. Fields or wave structures relating to electromagnetism are associated not with subatomic matter but also all substances in nature, including those within our bodies. But there is very little information about such electromagnetic interactions of genes or cells etc., because of the increased complexity of these materials over the inorganic substances to which physics applies itself in the micro-realms.

In illustration #1 some of the biological and chemical sciences have been related to certain "Levels of 0rganization". These are the fields study which observe and analyze the structures and occurrences in the body to which this article is limited. There are of course no hard and fast boundaries between areas of research. The sciences listed are some (not the only ones) which happen to have the too and techniques applicable to the selected Levels of Organization in the diagram.

ILLUSTRATION #1

LEVELS of ORGANIZATION	THE SCIENCES
(1) Atoms	Atomic Physics
(2) DNA	Chemistry
(3) Genes	Genetics	Biochemistry
(4) Chromosomes	Cell-Physiology
(5) Cells	Histology
(6) Organs	Physiology
(7) Body	Anatomy	Biology