What Doctors Don't Tell YouEvery Jewish boy knows that chicken soup is the world’s greatest medicine and can cure all our ills. His mother has been telling him so for more than two thousand years, so that puts it slightly above the double blind, placebo controlled trial.
Taking their childhood lessons to heart, two Israeli doctors have called for the soup to be included in the World Health Organization’s list of essential drugs (Can Med Assoc J, 1999; 161: 1532-3).
Although they’re not altogether clear about the illnesses it can treat or the dosage, the doctors urge their colleagues not to be put off by lack of evidence.
Judging by past performance, we can’t see that being an insurmountable obstacle, and at least the soup fulfills Hippocrates’ first tenet.
Daniel Redwood DC
Tom Ferguson MD
