Currents of death?

[摘要] The notion that malign invisible forces may cause disease exerts a powerful grip on the popular imagination in modern society. Such beliefs have recently been manifested in our practice area in the court case involving charges of abuse of a child accused of witchcraft and in a campaign against the siting of a mobile phone mast near a local school. Although fears of the adverse effects of electromagnetic fields are currently in the ascendant, I still see one representative of an older tradition: a patient who tapes little magnets at various sites around her body in the belief that this relieves her rheumatic symptoms. However, the old-fashioned faith in the healing power of magnetic and electrical forces has given way to a distinctively modern preoccupation that these forces, now appropriated by science and technology, and manipulated by sinister capitalist corporations, are damaging to health, particularly to the health of children.

[学科分类] 卫生学