Robert S. Mendelsohn

ROBERT S. Mendelsohn M.D. was a practicing physician for over 25 years. He was Chairman of the Medical Licensing Committee for the State of Illinois, Associate Professor of Preventive Medicine and Community Health in the School of Medicine of the University of Illinois, and received awards for excellence in medicine and medical instruction.

In his 1979 book, Confessions of a Medical Heretic, he denounced his profession and said modern medicine is religion, not science:

I believe that Modern Medicine’s treatments for disease are seldom effective, and that they’re often more dangerous than the diseases they’re designed to treat.

I believe the dangers are compounded by the widespread use of dangerous procedures for non-diseases.

I believe that more than ninety percent of Modern Medicine could disappear from the face of the earth — doctors, hospitals, drugs, and equipment — and the effect on our health would be immediate and beneficial.

I believe that Modern Medicine has gone too far, by using in everyday situations extreme treatments designed for critical conditions.

Every minute of every day Modern Medicine goes too far, because Modern Medicine prides itself on going too far. A recent article, “Cleveland’s Marvelous Medical Factory,” boasted of then Cleveland Clinic’s “accomplishments last year: 2,980 open-heart operations, 1.3 million laboratory tests, 73,320 electrocardiograms, 7,770 full-body x-ray scans, 24,368 surgical procedures.”

Not one of these procedures has been proved to have the least little bit to do with maintaining or restoring health. And the article, which was published in the Cleveland Clinic’s magazine, fails to boast or even mention that any people were helped by any of this expensive extravagance. That’s because the product of this factory is not health at all.

So when you go to the doctor, you’re seen … as a potential market for the medical factory’s products.

If you are pregnant, you go to the doctor and he treats you as if you’re sick. Childbirth is a nine- month disease which must be treated, so you’re sold on intravenous fluid bags, fetal monitors, a host of drugs, the totally unnecessary episiotomy, and — the top of the line product — the Caesarean delivery!

If you make the mistake of going to the doctor with a cold or the flu he’s liable to give you antibiotics, which are not only powerless against colds and flu but which leave you more likely to come down with worse problems.

If your child is a little too peppy for his teacher to handle, your doctor may go too far and turn him into a drug dependent.

If your new baby goes off his or her feed for a day and doesn’t gain weight as fast as the doctor’s manual says, he might barrage your breast-feeding with drugs to halt the natural process and make room in the baby’s tummy for man-made formula, which is dangerous.

[…]

If you’re unfortunate enough to be near a hospital when your last days on earth approach, your doctor will make sure your $500-a-day deathbed has all the latest electronic gear with a staff of strangers to hear your last words. But since those strangers are paid to keep your family away from you, you won’t have anything to say. Your last sounds will be the electronic whistle on the cardiogram. Your relatives will participate: they’ll pay the bill.

— Comments —

Janice writes:

This is a very good read. He is one of those rare physicians who doesn’t seem to be pasturing any sacred cows; something that can’t even be said of many of the “Frontline Doctors” .

It is clear that the Freemasonic-Rockerfellian Church of Allopathic Medicine is about as salutary for the health of the body as the Freemasonic Deweyan Church of Education is for the mind; or as the Freemasonic Church of the Novus Ordo is for the health of the soul. And that all of them are idolatrous.

Kyrie Eleison…

Hurricane Betsy writes:

I recall reading, more than 30 years ago, in a vegetarian health magazine, a little item  reporting that back in the 1970s,  the Office of Technology Assessment (an arm of Congress and no longer extant), found that the majority of standard medical treatments for the usual health problems for which people visited doctors,  had neither been been scientifically verified or proved effective.  How ’bout that.

I attended a talk by Robert Mendelsohn way-back-when.  His presentation was word-for-word taken from his book Confessions of a Medical Heretic (original 1979 version).   He just went from city to city on his tour saying the same old stuff that was in his book.    We in the audience were hoping for something bit more interesting, as a good many of us already had his book.    Just by way of discussion.

All in all, I liked what he wrote, at least the truth in his criticisms, but more specific advice would have been welcome.  Not just repeating “Listen to how Grandma handled Junior’s health issues [40 years ago]”.  No, Granny did not know everything, and the children even back in the 70s had conditions that didn’t exist in the 1920 or 30s.   There IS such a thing as attention deficit disorder, it’s not always just boys being bored sitting at desks all day.  It is not enough to say, “Don’t let your Dr. drug the child.”  That goes without saying, but what I wonder what he would have prescribed.

My near-bible for child care was Natural Medicine for Children by Julian Scott, PhD.  This was before Internet but if I had grandchildren, it is the book I’d pass along.

Laura writes:

In his book, he does talk about one possible remedy for hyperactivity in children. He recommends a diet that excludes food colorings, food additives and some specific foods.

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