approach. He knew that people’s thinking affects their health generally. He would have approved of the movement for Social Prescribing, started by another GP, Dr Michael Dixon, who saw that those who repeatedly attend the GPs surgery often have some social need, such as loneliness or poor diet, so that other solutions are needed to support them, rather than the pill they are asking for.
My Dad also knew that medication was not always the answer. Sometimes he would prescribe Smarties – to be taken 3 times a day – because he understood that the ritual of taking ‘medication’ could be as powerful as the actual medication. He also foresaw the danger of antibiotic misuse and has been proved right, with anti-biotic resistant bacteria and the potential damage to the gut bacteria, the general health consequences of which are only now being fully understood.
Dr Dixon has written² about his concerns about the decline in a human approach to medicine as technology has increased and doctors and nurses have become busier and forced to follow systems that reduce time spent with patients, impacting how they can care for them as individuals. There is research that shows the benefit of this listening and care to patients¹ and current NHS systems often don’t allow time for this.
My Dad certainly understood the need for listening to people and that’s why I think he was more than a doctor, he was a healer. He was famously late for family appointments – if he was supposed to be somewhere at a certain time you could add half an hour before he would get there. The reason for this was his care for patients. He found the 10 minutes allocated for surgery consultations too short and, in those days, doctors still frequently did home visits to their own patients after hours. A friend recently commented that he was asked why he still needed to visit when the patient had died, his response being that the family still needed support.
He had a particular interest in helping people recover from drug addiction, helped to set up medical services for students in Coventry and did training for the Samaritans, in particular the Festival Branch which was one of the ways of getting in touch with people having drug problems.
Sadly, he died before I learned Reiki. I asked my mother what he would have thought about it. She said he would have been interested, because he sometimes went to a spiritualist church where they did healing. I agree with her, not just for that reason, but also because he was a doctor who did more than analyse symptoms and dispense treatment. He tried to understand the needs of each person, taking a holistic rather than mechanical view. He understood, as we do in Reiki, that the underlying cause of physical illness lies on the mental and emotional levels and that effective healing addresses these as well. He also understood the importance of touch and spirituality. I think he would have been supportive of the movement towards integrative health which Dr Dixon is at the forefront of and which I hope Reiki will be part of.
