Dr. F.A.Saidov (M.D.), Tadjikistan

Male patient, age 26. Depression

While addressing the doctor, the patient showed retarded attitude and was all over "engrossed" in his thoughts. His words were actually only a whisper, manner of speaking was monotonous and incomprehensible. His head was lowered, left palm being cold to the touch and cyanotic in color.

His looks reminded me of an exciting case managed long ago by the great Muslim philosopher and scholar Avicenna (Abu-Ali Ibn-Sina). He had to treat a young man who engaged the attention of his relatives by a rather queer conduct: he stayed in bed all the days through without talking to anybody, and refused to take food. He did appear to be crestfallen and tristful, used to groan from time to time, his eyes being full of tears. Eventually he became just emaciated, yet the doctors in charge failed to find out what was behind such a condition.

Being a very good psychologist, Avicenna did succeed in establishing the truth, and diagnosed the case as one-way love. According to him, the condition came to be known as the "disease of love". In his effort to restore the patient to health, the ancient scholar's advice for the young couple was to reunite tenderly in love as soon as feasible.

Now let us return to our patient Kh. He turned out to be in love with a girl who married another young man. Kh. was so dreadfully upset about it all that he had found himself in a state of depression.

Drawing on what is relevant to the case on hand, it became possible to make the diagnosis: UM-Sorrow. In this connection the patient had his UM-Sorrow sedated (fig. 1), UM-Joy tonified, and UM-Anger tonified. In addition, the areas corresponding to the heart, brain, kidneys, pancreas, as well as basic points were carefully warmed up with moxas in the standard correspondence system.

Fig. 1. Sedation of UM-Sorrow

After the first therapeutic session the patient's condition showed a worthwhile improvement. He became more active in behavior, demonstrated a free and well-articulated way of speaking, his head not dropping any more. His general condition returned to norm after the third session. He got happily married to another girl.