Bad Blood and Modern Science

The traditional Arab science of ‘Hijama’, cupping or ‘blood-letting’ , has been around in the Gulf for many hundreds of years. It has earlier precedents, notably among the ancient Greeks and Egyptians and traditionally was an important procedure in Chinese and Indian medical practices. In the Arab world, the philosopher Ibn Sina among others, endorsed its use in certain circumstances with the right precautions. The Arab physicians seemed, in general, to be in agreement with the famous Roman physician Claude Galen [AD 129 – 200] of Pergamum, whose enthusiasm for the practice was well known. More importantly for the Muslim physicians, this procedure – loosely translated as ‘blood-sucking’ in Arabic – was also strongly recommended by the Prophet himself ,who saw in it a highly effective and useful remedy against many ailments of the body and the mind. The procedure basically involves the use of cups or horns to extract blood from certain points on the body following small incisions. The idea is that the viscosity of the blood is thence reduced and with it the ‘bad blood’ and toxins that may have accumulated in the body causing different ailments and disease. The extraction of blood is therefore viewed as an early form of detoxification.

Despite these honourable and, in the case of Prophet Muhammad, auspicious recommendations Hijama is, in countries like Saudi Arabia, beginning to be questioned on the presumption that modern science has made the need for such recommendations obselete.

I recently went along to a branch of the famous Dr.Suleiman Al Habib chain of hospitals in Riyadh to enquire about the possibility of having the procedure carried out by qualified practioners only to find rather bemused-looking staff explaining that the procedure was no longer on the menu. I later found out that the Saudi Health Services Council recently advised practioners to abandon the practice altogether because “evidence given to prove its effectiveness was non-scientific”. I was shocked but not altogether surprised to find Buciallism [ Maurice Bucaille - one time exponent of the much discredited "modern- science -proves- the -Quran" thesis] rearing its ugly head in Arab circles again.  The faces of  some of the hospital staff – who really ought to know better – summed it all up for me; a mixture of unbeknowest smugness carved out of an unhealthy ignorance of the world of alternative medicine. There is nothing ‘Bedou’ [unsophisticated] about cupping but something very ‘bedou’ about the complete uncritical endorsement of ”modern science” . There are just as many fads, fashions in science as there in the fashion boutiques of Milan, New York or Riyadh – as the famous case of Hollywood actress Gweneth Paltrow amply shows. Rather than assuming that the whole of modern medicine is some kind of universal remedy for all of our ills, Paltrow was recently spotted bearing the visible marks of having been cupped after undergoing treatment using TCM [Traditional Chinese Medicine].  If modern wealthy celebrities are opting for alternative medicine, on the knowledge that modern medicine is the not the universal cure of all evils, why then are some Saudis refusing to acknowledge the Sunnah of the Prophet as an effective alternative? When will mimetic reflexes and inferiority complexes finally evaporate from the Nejd or will it end only when every other aspect of the Sunnah is eliminated on the ground that modern science has not yet verified its effectiveness?