“In the field of medicine, Galen, the Alexandrian scientist, propounded a view that is still around, nowadays called 'alternative medicine.'It was taught in many medical schools until the mid-nineteenth century and now is becoming popular again. Human health is the result of the balance of humors, or temperaments. Physical exercise, bathing, and herbal remedies keep the four temperaments in balance, or restore balance, in case one, such as melancholia (depression), comes to dominate. Today's transactional psychiatry teaches much the same medical doctrine as Galen did.”

“Modern medicine is not scientific, it is full of prejudice, illogic and susceptible to advertising. Doctors are not taught to reason, they are programmed to believe in whatever their medical schools teach them and the leading doctors tell them. Over the past 20 years the drug companies, with their enormous wealth, have taken medicine over and now control its research, what is taught and the information released to the public.”

“For nearly a hundred years, psychiatry has been striving to apply medical model thinking to psychiatric disorders. In this model, the symptoms besieging patients are sorted into specific disease entities and the causes then identified and removed. For doctors of internal medicine, this works. In the case of diabetes mellitus, for example, the symptoms of urinary frequency, fatigue, and confusion often lead to suspicion of the underlying cause, which is confirmed by blood sugar monitoring and then treated by insulin replacement.But psychiatric symptoms are much harder to sort into diagnoses. People with depression sometimes become paranoid. People with schizophrenia sometimes become depressed. Some people who hear voices have no other symptoms whatsoever, and others who hear voices also fall victim to terrible mood swings. Thus far, the hope that psychiatry would be able to identify homogeneous disease states, uncover the biological underpinnings, and remedy them has been largely a barren one. Kappler's symptoms, however, evolved when the hope for psychiatry's becoming a true medical specialty was bright to the point of being blinding. Over the years he would collect over a dozen diagnoses and cavalierly take a myriad of medicines, but no one would be able to bring him close to confronting the past he had disowned, to stand a chance of making peace with it and, ultimately, overcoming it. (46)”

“Depression, we are told over and over again, is a brain disease, a chemical imbalance that can be adjusted by antidepressant medication. In an informational brochure issued to inform the public about depression, the US National Institute for Mental Health tells people that 'depressive illnesses are disorders of the brain' and adds that 'important neurotransmitters - chemicals that brain cells use to communicate - appear to be out of balance'. This view is so widespread that it was even proffered by the editors of PLoS [Public Library of Science] Medicine in their summary that accompanied our article. 'Depression,' they wrote, 'is a serious medical illness caused by imbalances in the brain chemicals that regulate mood', and they went on to say that antidepressants are supposed to work by correcting these imbalances.The editors wrote their comment on chemical imbalances as if it were an established fact, and this is also how it is presented by drug companies. Actually, it is not. Instead, even its proponents have to admit that it is a controversial hypothesis that has not yet been proven. Not only is the chemical-imbalance hypothesis unproven, but I will argue that it is about as close as a theory gets in science to being dis-proven by the evidence.”

“It’s all about balance. Balancing exercise, food, and life. No excesses.”

“I'm sorry, 'herbal medicine', "Oh, herbal medicine's been around for thousands of years!" Indeed it has, and then we tested it all, and the stuff that worked became 'medicine'. And the rest of it is just a nice bowl of soup and some potpourri, so knock yourselves out.”