A medical intuitive is a person who uses intuition or other methods other than the typical diagnostic processes of evidence-based medicine (EBM) to examine a person and locate any illnesses or afflictions affecting the person. This may be done in lieu of or in addition to standard medical diagnostic procedures, and is often intended to be a noninvasive, holistic approach to medicine and medical diagnosis. Some medical intuitives also claim they can heal the afflicted through means such as psychic surgery or faith healing. A medical intuitive can be someone otherwise uneducated in medical matters, though sometimes the intuitive will also be a doctor of medicine (MD).
Though he or she may use different methods, a medical intuitive will often “see” the source of a person’s illness or affliction through some visual cue on the person’s body. This may come in the form of seeing a person’s aura and being able to detect areas of poor health due to changes in the aura, or seeing areas of darkness or graininess in the region from which a person’s ailment is stemming. Some intuitives even claim to be able to see the afflicted organ or area of the person’s body through clothing, skin, and other obstructions.
A medical intuitive will often work with another medical professional or as a consultant to help someone narrow down the region causing illness. Though some intuitives may have some medical knowledge or even be an MD, this practice is rarely used directly for diagnosis, and is instead often intended to help determine the area that should be looked at further by a medical professional. A medical intuitive can also potentially work as a faith healer of some sort, and may claim to be able to remove the person’s illness after finding it, though this is somewhat rare.
Critics of the medical intuitive community claim that no evidence has been demonstrated showing that any intuitive has had greater accuracy with diagnosis beyond what pure chance would provide. Defenders of medical intuitives claim that science cannot accurately measure or evaluate the medical intuition process, but continue to support the practice as a viable means of complimenting EBM. The term “medical intuitive” was first coined in 1987 and has been used since to describe the use of intuition or psychic vision to see illness. In 2002, the College of Medical Intuition was founded in Canada by Dr. Marilyn Parkin, and a number of other institutes and classes offer similar training in medical intuition.