Salus June 4, 2025

Bill B

These are interesting metaphors. The castle is more of a mechanical metaphor. Gay’s metaphor is oozy, it’s organic. It’s messy. It’s not tidy. The difference is analogical rather than digital, which means it’s kind of like this, kind of like that.

I’ve been recently taking antibiotics and can offer a classic case. The antibiotics may help one part of the system, but they’re creating havoc in the gut. Are there solutions inside healthcare that work for one small element of it, but do plain havoc on the central processing system?

Molly

I would also note that the gut is a really embarrassing part of the body. It’s taboo to talk about it. It’s not something we talk about in polite company, but we’re realizing more and more how important the gut is as the second brain, as a seat of intuition, as something that communicates with the first brain quite a lot to control a lot of aspects of our health, both psychological, emotional, and physical.

Bill B

Harry Stack Sullivan is one of my heroes. He said that the really fascinating thing is not sexuality. The real fascinating things are feces. That is, as little children, this is warm stuff that comes out of our own body. Kind of interesting. It is something that I have created. Wow, I want to play with it. But then someone says: Don’t touch that. Go over to that toilet and get rid of it and never look at it again. It smells horrible. So, Jeremy, I was thinking when you talk about what’s discarded in the healthcare system, are these things treated like feces? Don’t touch them.

Bill G

Don’t talk about them. They smell bad. So, we just ignore them, and we don’t want to deal with them. Jesus had an interesting metaphor, right, about not what goes in, but what comes out.

Molly

I love that. I quote that all the time. Jesus had a scatological sense of humor. It’s not what goes into a person, but what comes out of them. That’s taboo. That’s hideous. That was his joke. He really meant hateful speech. But he told it as a joke.