Rubbing a piece of meat on a wart

Rubbing a piece of meat on a wart

I found myself working with a born again Christian, He was a nice
enough chap and he recounted a event that happened before he
discovered Religion. He developed a wart upon his lip which was duly
zapped by a doctor, but which then developed into an ugly bunch of
small ones which began to spread down his chin. A mate then suggested
that he rubs some meat on it, then bury it in the garden. He did not
take this advice seriously and the warts got worse, so eventually in
desperation he decided to try it. It didn't work ! His mate asked him
if he had he buried the meat, which he hadn't, and still desperate he
duly did the whole bizarre procedure this time. After a week or so
the warts disappeared and never troubled him again, he asked his mate
why did he have to bury the meat in the garden and his mate told him
that as the meat started to rot away so would the warts.
Years later when my workmate was a born again Christian he asked of
his pastor what happened, the pastor replied that it was his own faith
or belief that cured him, in other words it was the power of the mind
(In a spiritual sense) and not a kind of spooky cure or miracle. Now
curiously, Science indeed would concur with this but in this case it
might possibly see that folk remedies like this might have a basis in
chemistry, but what both Religion and Science would be in agreement is
that the burying meat business was rubbish. Now the fact that warts
will disappear of their own accord focuses the attention of the timing
of any seeming cures like this and it wouldn't have taken much effort
to test this in laboratory conditions, but Science hasn't.
My inital reaction was that I thought there probably was something
in the meat that cured him but I was curious about the meat burying
business. I didn't believe it had anything with the power of the mind
though, because of my workmate's mental attitude at the time.
Conventional medicine had failed him and the sense of desperation was
kicking in as it started gotting worse. And I would argue that it was
the desperation was motivation that made him eventually take his
mate's advice. He did not not do it because he was in awe of his mate.
I'm aware that you could argue that my christian workmate is a
suggestible believer type and that's why it worked, I personally don't
buy that, because why didn't it work the first time, when he didn't
bury the meat ? Why didn't it work because of faith in the Doctor ?
What this little incident demonstrated to me is how both these
extremely powerful 'organisations' cannot look certain phenomena
squarely in the face. They already have a worldview which determines
what is, and what is not likely to be true. And this alternative
medical procedure seems to have survived 100's of years and through
very dangerous periods when Religion might have viewed this as work of
the devil and Science less dangerously ridiculed it as old Old Wive's
Tale.
So let me give you my tentative explanation of what I think
might be going on here, but first of all I must describe two phenomema
from the natural world. There is a type of slime mould that behaves
like a lot of individual amoeba type creatures but at certain periods
gather together to form a structure for reproduction purposes. This
living thing is on the borderline of a multi-cellular organism as we
understand it, I mean is this a multi-cellular organism or is it a lot
of individual cells that gather together for a specific purpose ? And
what is doing the organising ? Science would suggest that it is
chemical messages that initiates this behaviour and genetic instinct
that makes it form the structure, which I won't argue with, but it
looks uncomfortably ghostly to the average person. The other
observation comes from the fact that returning wasps just die when
they find their hive with their queen has been smoked, killing all in
the hive. Without their hive, the overall organising principle, they
just seem to lose their 'sense of purpose' and die.
Now bearing these two observations in mind I'm going to suggest
that when the meat is rubbed against the wart some cells of that wart
are transferred to the meat. The wart being some kind of parasitic
virus thing which integrates with and feeds of other living organisms,
and in this case the virus has attached itself to an organism that is
rapidly on it's way out and so as the cells become aware that host is
dying, this message of doom is shared by the wart virus in both
locations via that strange connectedness displayed in the slime mould
and then the virus either leaves or dies just like those wasps who
gave up due to a 'sense of pointlessness' because the organising
principle. the hive, has been taken away. Concerning why the organic
thing should be buried underground, well perhaps it speeds up the
rotting process and maybe it takes it away from the air where the wart
virus may get transferred elsewhere. This meat rubbing and burying
procedure looks like a trick to me and is utilising the virus's
ethereal collective connectedness, combined with the strong imperative
in the 'Host is Dying' message that it is fooled into giving up.
I got some verification of this theory only just the other
day, when I heard that Janet Street Porter (UK Media Person) had a
succesful wart treatment like this, except it was potato used and not
meat. For those who might give more weight to a celebrity's
experiences, then this might help you believe it has more validity.
Porter is no weak gullible type believer person, in fact she's exactly
the opposite ! But more importantly what it shows is that it may not
be any specific organic stuff you rub on the wart, but the fact the
organic stuff rots away that seems to be the key.
As I said this is just a tentative explanation but at least it
doesn't rely on all the tired old arguments - gullibilty, coincidence,
fraud etc. I am applying the Occam's razor principle (Looking for the
simplest solution) so beloved of Scientists. It doesn't rely on
ignoring factors that don't fit the theory or adding other factor's
that weren't present. But what it does suggest, is that at the heart
of the natural world is a ghostly connectedness which seems to be the
basic glue that holds multi cellular organisms like ourselves
together,
I am not a creationist I'm just, in my own humble way,
following on from thinkers like Lyall Watson, Rupert Sheldrake and
Arthur Koestler who strived to show that there are 'paranormal'
aspects lying at the heart of living things.
http://www.geocities.com/clivemcgee/index.html
Clive