Medical conflict

With reference to Conflict between diagnosis and data (December 6), medically the human body can be interpreted in two ways. First, only as an integrated system of complex chemical reactions. Second, a more holistic one, as a living being that has both organic and psychological attributes. The most logical stand should be that the medical community should not study the human body independent of the human mind. This, however, does not imply that new research should not be sponsored to find out the systemic causes of the diseases or syndromes hitherto assumed to be induced by mental stress and other psychological disorders.

Shouvik Chattopadhyay
Sodepur

Fake snake antidote

I completely agree with the author's viewpoint expressed in Those fatal medicines (December 6). I had experienced a tragedy which seems more plausible after having read the article. Eight years ago, during my stint as a teacher in a rural school in Jalpaiguri, one of my colleagues had been bitten by a King Cobra. We had managed to rush him to the city hospital within half an hour. The doctor attending to him had promptly injected him with an antivenom serum that had been acquired by the hospital on the previous day. In spite of all the care he received there, my colleague expired late at night. The incident puzzled me so long, but now I realise that the snake venom antidote was either a fake one or was adulterated.

Subhash Banerjee
Calcutta-57