Various poultices line the shelves, waiting to help heal patients with alternative medical means.

Story by Andrew Creasey
Photos by Madelynn Vislocky

The patient nervously awaits treatment in the sterile, modern interior of the doctor’s office. The surrounding shelves and cabinets are pep­pered with the instruments of modern medicine: stethoscopes, antibiotics, blood pressure cuffs, and digital thermometers. A large wound exposed on the patient’s thigh has withstood countless con­ventional treatments. Out of options, the patient is seeking alternative treatment.

The doctor confidently enters the room, cradling a small bottle. Inside, there is a writhing pulse of movement. Working carefully, the doctor treats the gangrene-riddled wound by driz­zling the festering lesion with the microsurgeons that are making a medical comeback: maggots. Over the course of seventy-two hours, the sterilized, wormlike larva will slither within the patient’s body and cleanse the wound of dead tissue. The side effects: a slight itch, and the smelly, sticky discharge of the crea­tures’ digestive enzymes. Afterwards, the maggots are washed free and the wound, scrubbed clean by the flesh-hungry grubs, will heal. The process is a legitimate medical procedure, and is even covered by healthcare.

The cleansing power of maggots has been known for centu­ries. Anecdotal anthropological evidence traces maggot use over the past thousand years, from the aboriginal Ngemba tribe of New South Wales, Australia, to the Hill Tribe people of North­ern Burma. Before dressing wounds, ancient Mayan healers would soak bandages in animal blood and bake them in the sun until they teemed with maggots. Today, it is one of a number of unconventional, antiquated medical practices that are gradually permeating modern Western medicine.

Although Americans predominantly treat their ailments with synthesized drugs engineered by the burgeoning pharmaceutical industry, alternative medicines, such as acupuncture and herbal remedies, are carving a niche in the prescription drug market. In 2007, Americans spent $34 billion on alternative medicines. And while this doesn’t compare to the $234.1 billion we spent on prescription drugs in 2008, these ancient, natural practices are mounting a comeback.

For some, alternative practitioners are a breath of fresh air among an increasingly medicated culture. In 2009, pharmacies dispensed almost 4 billion prescriptions, up from the 2.8 billion it distributed in 2000. This growing prevalence, when coupled with an annual growth in prescription prices of 3.6 percent from 2000-2009, creates an increasingly difficult economic environ­ment to navigate. In contrast, a 2008 study by the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention found that on average, Ameri­cans paid less than $50 per visit to alternative medicine practi­tioners. For acupuncture, the average was slightly higher at $75. For prescriptions, without including the charge for visiting the doctor’s office, Americans paid, on average, $71.69 in 2008, ac­cording to the Consumer Price Index.

Originally developed in China, acupuncture taps into various points to manipulate the flow of the body’s energy.

Along with these economic issues, motives for choosing unconventional medicine stem from frustrations with a mono­lithic healthcare system too bloated to provide individual care catered to personal needs. Rob Singer, owner of Acupuncture for the People in Eugene, Oregon, has firsthand experience with the failures of Western medicine that push patients towards alterna­tive treatments.

Singer was initially attracted to acupuncture after a visit­ing acupuncturist spoke in his holistic healing class, a course he took only for an easy A. The lecture fascinated him, and it was the initial spark that catalyzed a lifelong interest in the practice. After graduating with a degree in Environmental Science, Singer took a break from school for seven years, but his interest in acu­puncture persisted, prompting him to enter the arduous, four-year acupuncture master’s program at the University of Oregon.

Now within his cozy practice, patients recline in a snug, com­munal room filled with La-Z-Boys. The sound of snoring mingles with the steady pulse of Eastern-infused trance music emanat­ing from a small sound system perched atop soft carpet. Gentle ripples of water trickle from a plug-in fountain, providing a wash of white noise that converges with the warm air discharged by electric radiators to create a tranquil ambiance.

At first glance, it’s akin to a sort of grown-up naptime. Closer inspection reveals tiny, hairpin needles extruding from seemingly random points across bare limbs. These people are seeking, and often times finding, relief from ailments such as depression and chronic pain, through acupuncture.

“Acupuncture utilizes energy pathways throughout the body that run from the extremities into the internal organs,” Singer says. Acting as guides, acupuncture needles are used to rectify energy imbalances caused by disease or unhealthy habits.

Acupuncture identifies more than 400 energy points across twelve channels on the body. When confronting new symptoms, Singer outlines a point prescription plan designed to manipulate the necessary energy channels to positively affect the afflicted regions.

“It’s like creating a recipe,” Singer says.

The procedure is also almost completely painless. The steril­ized, disposable needles are tapped into the skin at energy points and then finely adjusted to a specific depth. Patients sometimes experience a dull ache or pulling sensation, but this disappears minutes after needle insertion.

While his treatments have a high success rate—in the last year alone, Acupuncture for the People saw 831 new patients and administered more than 7,500 treatments—Singer acknowl­edges that the notion of acupuncture can be difficult to accept.

“It’s very different than Western medicine, and, culturally, we don’t have a frame of reference to understand it,” Singer says. “Western medicine is very scientific and focuses on symptoms and pathologies. Chinese medicine looks at the whole person and sees that the symptoms are really a sign of an underlying imbalance, and then looks to improve that imbalance to relieve the symptoms.”

At times, he recalls patients searching for relief after frustrat­ing and expensive doctor visits that resulted in only a bloated list of prescriptions—most of which merely alleviated side ef­fects from previous prescriptions. Others simply can’t afford a visit to the doctor’s office.

“A lot of times, the folks who are seeking acupuncture care are here because Western medicine did not work for them,” Singer says.

Much of traditional medicine is rooted in the use of herbs, ranging from the pain-easing poppy to antioxident rich oregano.

Eugene herbalist Heather Nic an Fhleisdeir has personal experience with alternative treatments succeeding where con­ventional treatment failed. The battle was for her life, and her treatment was herbal therapy.

At twenty-three, Nic an Fhleisdeir was diagnosed with an in­curable condition. Doctors were unsure how long she would live. Then one night, she heard an herbalist on a radio show whom she immediately connected with. In just eight days, according to Nic an Fhleisdeir, the herbalist turned her symptoms around. Today, she has been diagnosed free of the condition.

“After going through that, I realized there were more truths in the world than I had been exposed to,” she says.

While her experience is more pronounced than others, she is not alone in turning toward herbal remedies. According to the World Health Organization, 80 percent of the population in Asia and Africa depends primarily on traditional medicine predominately based in herbalism. Between 2003-2004, Western Europe spent $5 billion on herbal treatments. China spent $14 billion in 2005.

Nic an Fhleisdeir views herbs as the first and oldest line of defense in healthcare. Often times, she can solve a patient’s problem without resorting to costly doctor visits. She compares the health of the body to a faulty electronic device. “First, you make sure it’s plugged in,” she says. “That’s the nice thing you can do with an herbalist is make sure your body is plugged in before you dismantle it.”

There are times, however, when patients have ailments that no medicine, conventional or otherwise, can solve. Dr. Edgar Maeyens Jr., a dermatologist from Coos Bay, Oregon, is regularly confronted with these types of conditions in the form of chronic wounds and ulcers that can persist for years without responding to treatment.

Where other doctors would, as he put it, dump these cases, Maeyens sought alternative options by turning to history. Reading about wounds in the American Civil War, he found an intriguing agent in wound healing: maggots. Maeyens discovered that soldiers with wounds infected with maggots lived, and those who didn’t either died or had a limb amputated. Researching further, he found a doctor, R.A. Sherman, who grew sterilized medical maggots in California and had success using them to treat chronic wounds.

“I’m a curious guy,” Maeyens says. “I just couldn’t stand not being able to help these patients.”

Now, when Maeyens receives patients with persistent wounds, the answer to a question that once plagued him for years is obvious: insert maggots, which he refers to as his “little pals,” into the wound, and let them work their magic.

Maggots are built to clean wounds. They hunger only for dead tissue. Their tiny, pliable bodies allow them to navigate every nook and cranny of a wound to scrub clean areas no other tools can touch. Even their excrement contains enzymes that break down dead tissue. And, to make matters even easier, the biological clock propelling their life cycle forward will tell them to stop eating, get underground, pupate, and complete their metamorphosis into flies right about the time they’ve cleaned the wound. From there, flushing them out is easy.

Using these creatures with a custom dressing he designed to absorb the seeping discharge caused by their digestive juices, Maeyens has achieved astonishing results. He recalls patients who came in with $40,000 in hospital bills and a wound that wouldn’t heal. After three days of “maggot therapy” costing $100, combined with ten weeks of recovery, Maeyens’ microsur­geons have saved limbs and relieved the burden of ulcers that have persisted for, in one case, eight years.

Despite these feats, Maeyens says that some doctors deride maggot treatment as barbaric. Surgeons, according to Maey­ens, chafe at the idea that there is a manifestation of nature’s malfeasance that they can’t scrape out the body with a scalpel. Yet, time and again, Maeyens receives patients with “incurable” wounds, and, time and again, Maeyens’ “little pals” do the job no medical procedure conceived by man could.

In the end, this lack of mainstream acceptance only gives Maeyens incentive to prove the doubters wrong. “It’s more than my pleasure to push their noses into it with these maggots,” Maeyens says. “It’s so cheap and so simple, and it’s really effica­cious. It comes down to helping the patient.”

Most patients are grateful they underwent the treatment, de­spite what amounts to genuine displeasure bordering on outright pain once the maggots grow and start chewing on the dead flesh.

“[The patients] almost bond with them,” Maeyens says. “They’re saying: ‘Thank you for saving my limb.’” Some even request a jar of the larva to take with them as a souvenir.

Many patients enter the treatment as a final, desperate chance at recovery and end up wearing the scar as a wound of pride. “It’s great attention for them,” Maeyens says. “They can brag to their peers: ‘I had maggot therapy.’”

Today, maggot therapy is still under the medical radar, yet Maeyens is seeing interest grow. He receives calls from doctors across the world, and local surgeons refer patients with chronic wounds to Maeyens regularly. They’ve become, as Maeyens puts it, “believers.”

Because maggots have the ability to work themselves into every nook and cranny, these microorganisms heal persistent infections and festering wounds effectively. Photo courtesy of Doctor Edgar Maeyens Jr.

In the end, that’s what all unconventional treatments require: belief. While the results of acupuncture, herbalism, and maggot therapy do not rely on the mind-set of the patient to produce positive results, they need open minds to flourish within a cul­ture that predominately tackles illness by swallowing a pill.

Alternative medicine, as it is practiced today, is a misnomer. The question becomes: What is it an alternative of? Patients who choose to pursue these options do not have to decide between conventional and alternative medicine. It’s not a matter of one or the other. These two divergent approaches can coexist.

In the end, there is no universal method of healthcare. Disparaging a course of treatment due to cultural taboos is myopic and counterproductive. The battle of health has no clear victorious method. The human body, in all its bewildering complexity, can deceive the most erudite. It doesn’t always listen to the degree framed on the wall. There are options beyond the conventional, choices between the norms. These are the avenues worth pursuing, because, while it’s never a guarantee, it’s always worth exploring the alternatives.