HOM Blog 2.1

This post was supposed to be submitted on Friday, but I was unable to find wifi. Here is my post for our first full week in Bonn and my post about my weekend in Munich will be either tonight or tomorrow morning!

We just finished up our first full week in the History of Medicine program, and it has been one amazing ride! We are now on a train to Munich to spend the weekend, which will be the subject of my next blog. We started off the week Monday morning with a full day of class. The first two classes were for our HOM course where we had a detailed lecture on five model health care systems throughout the world. Specifically we looked at the Bismarck Model for Germany, the Beveridge Model for the UK, the Douglas model from Canada, the Out-of-Pocket model from Cambodia, and finally it was shown how the healthcare in the US is a mixture of all four of these different models. I spoke with my host mother about the German Bismarck model and she explained a very unique view. She works for the Health Ministry in Bonn as a translator and her ex-husband works for the government in Berlin. Her ex-husbands healthcare was paid for entirely by the government, while her children were under the umbrella of her ex-husband. She, however, preferred to be privately insured because of her strong belief in alternative medicine that would not be covered by most insurance groups. I have never been exposed to the alternative medicine, so hearing about this from someone as friendly as my host mother was very interesting. She told me about all different types of alternative medicines like homeopathy, reflexology, Vietnamese massage therapy of the face, and also some kind of Swedish muscle spirals therapy. We talked about homeopathy for a while and she explained the basic principles of using different potencies of natural metals, herbs and spices to cure someone with a specific set of symptoms. The doctors who practice this type of medicine created a cure book by being healthy and giving their selves things like opium and different kinds of metals and then documenting their symptoms. Then, when someone presents with specific symptoms, the doctor can flip through his massive book and match their symptoms to the symptoms in the book that show which natural element to use. She also explained the different “potencies” they are given, which was a little complicated. She explained reflexology to me which is about different parts of the body being mapped to the bottom of the feet, and how massaging the bottom of the feet in certain ways can help you. She has a great collection of all kinds of alternative medicine books and she loaned me a book on reflexology so that I could enjoy it and learn a little more. Even if the massaging doesn’t work, you would still have had a great foot massage!

The rest of the week consisted of learning about the history of medicine starting from the most primitive forms of documented medicine. We also have had all six of our German classes, which I really enjoyed. I actually like the language so much I may get the Rosetta Stone course from the A&M IT Department when I get back to College Station for the fall! Our tour by Dr. Wasser of the House of History museum was superb! We learned about how Germany was in ruins after the war, and how their culture has had to change, how their language had to change and have words eliminated from normal conversations due to their connection to the third Reich, and finally how Germans are possibly forever marked for what happened during just twelve years of their history. On Wednesday we visited Beethoven’s birthplace, which was interesting to see but the house may have been hotter than a sauna! On Thursday we spent a full day in Cologne. We had a guided city tour by Franz where we learned about the great Roman history and saw many different ruins from the times when they ruled that are next to the Rhine. We then visited the ELDE HAUS which is a former Gustapo prison in downtown Cologne. We heard about many of the prisoners that were kept in their prison cells from hours to months, because they used different objects to inscribe calendars and paragraphs into the walls of their cell. Finally, we had a fantastic tour of the cathedral. Words do not justify how majestic this structure was. We had a great tour guide that showed us more of the cathedral than Olivia has even seen before and this was her fourth time on the tour! All in all, this first full week has been amazing and I can’t wait to see what Munich and Vienna have in store for us! Auf Wiedersehen!