Medicine was accepted as a scientific discipline in the twelfth century in the European Universities. Naturally, it followed the other natural sciences like mathematics, physics, and biology. Physics, being the king of sciences, medical research followed Detrministic Predictability model of physics of those days. However, physics changed a lot in the early 1900s. The new physics of quantum mechanics was not very popular even among the big names in conventional physics of those days. Albert Einstein himself was skeptical when he termed Erwin Schrodinger’s “Cat Hypothesis” as a mathematical “trick.” However, it was quantum physics that gave respectability even to chemistry.



In the process medicine did not fork off to follow quantum physics but continued to follow the rules of conventional physics with its linear mathematical rules. Lot of water has flown under the bridge since then and newer insights have opened up new vistas in medical research. Unfortunately, even now most of the medical research uses the Cartesian model of looking at the human body in bits and pieces. Human body works as a whole. The Cartesian model, per force, will only have fifty-fifty chance of success. It is only the “Doctrine of Probabilities” of Blaise Pascal, a Parish priest, who was also a mathematician in his own right, that seems to work. Deterministic predictability does not.



Controlled studies in medicine, the benchmark for drug and technology audits, compare just a few parameters of the body. Time evolution in a dynamic system, the human body, on the other hand, depends on the total initial state of the organism. There is no proof that altering a small portion of the initial state would hold good as time evolves.



We have no way to assess the total initial state of the human being with the present state of our knowledge. The former includes the body, mind, and the genes. As such, our results and future predictions are only probabilities. Quantum physics has come to the same conclusion about this dynamic universe. Schrodinger, had devised an innovative experiment of enclosing a cat inside a closed box, along with a decaying atom of known half life and a phial of poison to see if the cat dies when the atom decays to break the phial. The future of the cat depended on the eye of the beholder. There was no way one could predict the atom decaying, the chance being fifty-fifty. Science is back to the “Doctrine of Probabilities” of Blaise Pascal.



We get to realise the importance of the mind in human diseases and their management only when we look at the problem from the point of view of quantum mechanics. Mind is a quantum concept. Mind resides in the subtlest of the subatomic particles of each and every human body cell. There are one hundred thousand billion in all. Newer studies in this direction have already yielded results that show the importance of the mind over matter in human disease processes. Two of the ongoing interventional studies, Enhancing Recovery in Coronary Heart Disease (ENRICHD) and Sertaline and Depression in Heart Attack Study (SADHART), would soon give us better perspective in this direction. Two elegant studies of intercessory prayer helping patients after a heart attack to reduce death and disability shows how the leptons (lepto-quarks) of the person who prays transmit the soothing effect on to the patient. In addition, the groundbreaking research of the Nobel winning botanist, Barbara McClintock, revealed the power of the mind even on the genes-the “Jumping Gene Hypothesis.”



Our own work and the work of some others in the field of heart rate variability (HRV) has thrown more light on the interconnectedness (mode-locking) of the different organ systems in the human body. Breathing being the most dominant rhythm it controls all other rhythms-the ultradian, circadian and the infradian rhythms. Newer physiology of menstruation shows how the Moon’s gravitational force influences the infradian rhythm of the menstrual cycle giving the 28 days’ cycle uterine bleeding in healthy women. The latter shows the effect of the environment and other planets on human physiology.

Modern medicine has failed to predict the future using the reductionist linear relationships. Present research methods in medicine still follow this faulty mathematics. Long term studies of interventions in the apparently healthy people with one or two abnormalities of body parameters (raised blood pressure or blood sugar) could result in unpredictable calamities. The probability of asymptomatic hypertension or hyperglycaemia in an otherwise healthy individual resulting in organ damage in the long run is only fifty-fifty like in the Cat Hypothesis. Those people who do not have the long-term bad effects of the elevated sugar or pressure expose themselves for the long-range side effects of the drugs. Long term studies of multiple interventions in those with the “so-called” risk factors did produce unexpected results.



None of the above uncertainties are unexpected if one understands quantum mechanics with Werner Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. Our future course of action should be to treat the human body as a whole with its inherent genetic and environmental make up. This would yield the desired results. We should stop predicting the unpredictable and interfere with man only when he gets symptoms. The human mind sends signals each time something goes wrong. Many of us are incapable of listening to the signals if we dull our senses by our habits of smoking, alcohol and other stimulants like caffeine and other drugs. In the absence of the above, one could easily listen to one’s mind and try and correct the deviations to a large extent. Human mind has been extensively studied in the ancient Indian system of Ayurveda wherein interventional methods are also suggested. The latter also has constitutional classes of people based on their mind, body and the genes- the three constitutional types being vaata, pitta, and kapha. In the future modern medicine will have to draw inspiration from other complementary systems as well.



With this background I had suggested elsewhere a newer concept of illnesses, where the mind plays the major role. Every disease is sown as a seed in the mind (It is not what we eat that kills us but what eats us-negative thoughts- that kill us) The seed grows slowly in the body aided and abetted by our environment (tobacco smoke) and our genetic make up. This could, after a lapse of time, result in the final disease. Management should, therefore, start with the mind and then proceed systematically to correct all the faults holistically. Our present system just studies the human body in isolation to detect abnormalities (raised sugar etc) that might only be the beginning of the future disease and could get corrected on its own if other factors change. Instead if we try and lower that elevated level by drugs we might be (50-50) harming the process. The body’s repair mechanism would try and set things right in every situation. Doctors could profitably intervene only when the internal balance fails and symptoms come up.



Sir Arthur Eddington summed up the situation in quantum physics thus: “ No familiar concept can be woven around the electron….it is something unknown and is doing we do not know what!” The model of the atom predicted by Neils Bohr and other great physicists of the time does not fit into this pattern. It is irony of fate that in 1906 J.J.Thomson of the Cavendish Laboratory fame, got his Nobel Prize for showing that electrons are particles; in 1937 his son got his Nobel Prize for showing that electrons are waves. Both father and son were correct in one sense and wrong in the true sense! Neutrons and protons are also similarly waves and particles depending on the eye of the beholder.



But nobody has seen an electron so far. Similarly, in medicine we have now realised the importance of the mind, which no one has seen so far. Where is the mind? Never mind. What is matter? No matter. But what is important is what the mind does for the matter. Present research and the future direction of medical research must accept the supremacy of the mind over matter for better medical care delivery. To put it in Sir Arthur’s words: Mind is something unseen and is doing what we are still trying to grapple with. Just as nobody understands what really goes on inside an atom, medical science does not understand what the mind really does. Mind, like the electron, is a sub-atomic quantum concept. We could easily study what the mind does to the body and its diseases. A complete break with the past thinking is the only answer to better patient care.



Eventually it is the subtle, the sub-atomic particle, the lepton, which is the king. Leptons run the whole show for the mind, body, and the genes. Until we realise this and make suitable changes in our medical research methodologies, we would be making the same mistakes that we have been making in the past few centuries. “Learn from history, as otherwise we will have to relive history”, is a good advice by the great Roman thinker, Cicero. Let us learn from the history of quantum physics. Great physicists of repute those days vehemently opposed the newer developments in that area. I am sure the same opposition would be there to change medical thinking. Let us respect the subtlest to get the best.