Editor's choice

The BMJ takes reason's last step

Molière described the man who had been speaking prose for more than 40 years without knowing it. BMJ readers are probably similarly unaware that they are mostly positivists, subscribing to the doctrine that man can have no knowledge of anything but phenomena. But inside every positivist there may be a shaman (a doctor-priest working by magic) trying to get out. This Christmas issuewith its emphasis on the paranormalsuggests that's the case.

Leonard Leibovici started his experiment by abandoning the idea that time is linear. Within a double blind randomised trial he asked people to pray for patients who were in his hospital years ago (p 1450). Compared with no prayer, a short prayer significantly improved outcomes. Leibovici says that "remote, retroactive intercessory prayer . . . should be considered for use in clinical practice." Still a positivist at heart, he points out that James Lind discovered the cure for scurvy centuries before the discovery of ascorbic acid. Visionaries are invited to explain Leibovici's findings on bmj.com.

F I D Konotey-Ahulu will not feel the need for an explanation. He describes four inexplicable cases, including an African woman who died of a death spell and had no abnormalities at necropsy (p 1452). Irritated by Professor Know-All (known in Europe as Erik the Genius), who attempts to explain everything, Konotey-Ahulu quotes Blaise Pascal: "There are two excesses: to exclude reason, to admit nothing but reason. The supreme achievement of reason is to realise that there is a limit to reason."

Nevertheless, Professor Know-All would have found support for his assertion that "sheer fright is known to kill" in another study we publish today. In the United States cardiac mortality peaked in Chinese and Japanese people (for whom the number 4 is unlucky) on the fourth of the month, but not in white controls (p 1443). The authors invoke Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who described Charles Baskerville's heart attack from extreme psychological distress in The Hound of the Baskervilles.

Our last study beyond reason shows that recitation of the rosary in Latin or yoga mantras slowed respiration and had positive physiological effects (p 1446). The rosary, the researchers later discovered, is linked with Tibetan monks via Arabs and the Crusaders.

Finally, Fred Kavalier has succeeded in converting our original studies into haiku poems. This may be the ultimate destination for our "ELPS" (electronic long, paper short) experiment. "BMJ discerns/Long papers like hot pincers/But haiku soothing."

Footnotes

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