I am at Dartmouth University in New Hampshire. For the past week, I have been participating in their Accelerated Language Program to learn to speak German. Although I am not quite fluent yet, mein deutsch ist nicht schlecht.

One of the main reasons I decided to learn this language is to gain access to the world of integrative medicine in Germany. Although the birthplace of the pharmaceutical industry is Basel, which borders Switzerland and France, Germany has long been home to some of the most developed and skilled integrative physicians in the world.

This is partly due to the fact that Europe is much older than America. Their medical schools had been using botanical drugs long before synthetic chemicals took over the world of medicine. Germany is also the birthplace of homeopathy, the Steiner movement and the organic food movement. While it is steeped in tradition, Germany is much more forward thinking and open-minded than Canada and the US.

Germans have an inherent distrust in all their establishments, which my tutors insist is due to the entire nation having been duped by Hitler during World War II. So they tend to think for themselves – once-bitten, twice shy. This has made it natural for integrative medicine to be adopted by patients, but also by physicians. An oft-quoted statistic is that 70% of their doctors use herbs, many of which are sold by prescription and paid for by the healthcare system.

I hope to attend a few important meetings over the coming year. One is the 44th annual Mediszinische Woche conference in Baden-Baden, a prestigious meeting that brings together thousands of physicians from the German-speaking world. They come to further their training in acupuncture, neural therapy, homeopathy, herbal medicine and energy-based healing practices. Another meeting is the European Congress of Integrative Medicine in Berlin, where more mainstream physicians will focus on bringing integrative medicine to their healthcare systems. Both ends of the spectrum should be very enlightening … and very relevant to our vision at the Seekers Centre.

I have always enjoyed speaking other languages, and they have strongly influenced my life – personally and professionally. As a child, learning Arabic and English at the same time gave the ‘second-language’ part of my brain a good workout. This made it easier to learn French while growing up, which I got to practice with francophone customers in our family convenience store. The basic Latin I learned in high school was a great help in medical school, making the dizzying vocabulary of anatomy, physiology and pathology easier to grasp.

Spanish was a watershed language for me as a doctor. At the beginning of my self-sponsored ‘sabbatical’, I learned some Portuguese in Brazil just for fun. I then gained fluency in Spanish while in Argentina, which gave me access to the traditional healers I worked with in Bolivia and Colombia. These men and women really opened my eyes to a whole new world, and seeing the healing that took place in their patients – talking to them myself about what had happened to them – was what finally convinced me that all this stuff was for real.

I didn’t get very far with Sanskrit in India, but the basic vocabulary that was part of my Ayurvedic training gave me new insights into where all the knowledge of Hippocrates, Galen and the entire history of medicine really came from. These men studied in Egypt, and the Egyptians likely studied Ayurveda. I will learn more Sanskrit one day, if only because it is said by linguists to be the most elegant language in the world, an intentionally designed masterpiece that is almost divinely-inspired. It is also the oldest living language in the world.

Most recently, speaking French has come in handy once again. It had a good deal to do with my integrative medicine curriculum gaining acceptance from my colleagues at the Faculty of Medicine in Ottawa. Speaking French is not an option at Canada’s only bilingual medical school. So now comes German. I will keep at it because it will likely open many new doors, but also because of the pure enjoyment of it all.

Languages are not just a means of communication; they are a window into an entire civilization. Wade Davis, a National Geographic Explorer-in-residence, who has written books about his travels to study medicinal plants in the Amazon, Haiti, Borneo and Tibet, is preaching about the importance of preserving culture and language. I wholeheartedly agree.

So … bis zum nachsten mal … until next time.

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