Letter to the editor: Promotion of Traditional Persian Medicine; A Neglected Necessity

I read with interest the article published in your prestigious jour- nal by Dr. Nayernouri.1 As I’m neither a physicist nor an astrono- mer, let s talk about some considerable medical points briefly:1) The respected author talks about the ineffectiveness of CAM modalities and placebo effect. As I know, there are numerous well- conducted surveys to endorse the efficacy of such practices.2–7 2) The curriculum of traditional medicine students is totally dif- ferent from what Dr. Nayernouri mentioned in his essay. Due to considerations some of which were referenced by the author1, policy makers deliberated to establish traditional medicine train- ing in the form of PhD course in order to strengthen the research foundations and to avoid malpractice in this field. They deserved general physicians for this course to guarantee the safety and to make well-designed methodological researches able to distin- guish right from invalid. 3) The first step in criticism is to be familiar with the subject deep- ly. It is a superficial thought to suppose that our brilliant scholars were thinking that the universe is composed of four elements. Is it acceptable that when Ibn Sina detected the layers of bladder without microscopic instruments,8 he was not able to recognize the multi-usage elements like iron or cupper?! The four elements in traditional Persian medicine (TPM) are unique terminologies for interpretation of holistic medicine.