Mind, Body, and the Experimental Shelf

Picture a menu that begins with massage and ends with gene therapy. In the same building, sometimes in the same afternoon, you can now have acupuncture, a ketamine infusion, a session of magnetic brain stimulation, a sound bath, and a consultation about injecting immune cells grown in a laboratory abroad. Some of these are old and gentle. Some are approved medicine being stretched beyond its evidence. Some are experiments with a price tag. They do not belong on the same shelf, and this part sorts them.

Clinical scenes in this edition are explicitly labeled illustrations. They describe imagined situations used to explain medical decisions, not documented patients, diagnoses, conversations, or treatment outcomes. They should not be read as evidence that a particular intervention works. Personal recollections are recollections, not medical records.