About monastic medicine

Handbook for a successful, healthy life

Father Johannes Pausch, the "herb witch" in his laboratory at the European monastery Gut Aich in St. Gilgen on Lake Wölfgang.

(Bild: WIRL PHOTO)

Herbalist Father Johannes Pausch from Salzburg and Carinthian intensive care physician, pain specialist and lateral thinker Professor Rudolf Likar have written a book; a magnificent volume that is much more than just exciting reading, but in truth a handbook for a natural, healthy life.

I have many books that are dog-eared, others with markings on the edges of the text or post-its for special pages. This book has everything plus the good old bookmarks and has long looked like a printed hedgehog. Because this book captivates the inclined reader, who is more interested in health than illness, in nature and spirituality as well as in the achievements of modern medicine, from the first page to the last. And then right from the beginning again.

Father Pausch, a doctor of theology and psychotherapist, can be called a "herbal witch" with impunity. He explains how he found his way into monastic medicine. The first time was as a young boy, when one of his predecessors treated him with soothing honey to heal a dirty wound he had sustained in a bicycle accident.

Father Pausch and Professor Dr. Rudolf Likar discussing traditional and monastic medicine.

(Bild: WIRL PHOTO)

Dr. Rudolf Likar is the author of many books, head of the largest department at Klagenfurt am Wörthersee Hospital, intensive care medicine, a pain specialist, palliative physician and renowned lateral thinker who is open to everything that heals, does good, saves lives and gives energy.

Sharing knowledge in threes: With herbal expert and mountain farmer Julia Moretti.

(Bild: Barbara Wirl/Wirl Photo)

Together, the two have now published the book "Säulen der Klosterheilkunde" (Pillars of Monastic Medicine) with the subtitle "Holistically healthy through ancient knowledge". It starts with an exciting discussion, to which the two have also invited Julia Moretti, a mountain farmer who knows herbs.

And then the authors go into great detail. The five pillars of monastic medicine - nature and experiencing nature, exercise, counseling and living together, therapy and treatment as well as living space and living - open this handbook full of tips for everyday life and beneficial wisdom.

Herbs on the pharmacist's scales.

(Bild: WIRL PHOTO)

And set as healing essences.

(Bild: WIRL PHOTO)

The authors then move on to the topic of spirituality and knowledge about individual medicinal herbs, touch on Tibetan medicine, delve into the secrets of TCM, traditional Chinese medicine, provide evidence of the effectiveness of intertwined measures of modern conventional and ancient monastic medicine with patient reports, report on old and new healers such as Mrs. Krasimira and her abilities and, last but not least, offer a guide to "What can we do ourselves?". For, as Reinhold Messner likes to put it, a "successful" life.

And this also involves such supposedly small things as words and thoughts, music and sounds and much more. Like smells, for example, whereby a short story is briefly recounted: how an old man, plagued by insomnia, was relieved of his plague with a small board; a small board from his old bed, which he had been used to for decades, which, placed under the mattress, gave him peace again through the delicate, barely perceptible and perhaps even imperceptible familiar smell.

The book concludes with 33 tips for everyday life. Rating: Worth reading, worth imitating and worth the price of 32.20. Published by Überreuter. Available in bookshops everywhere.