Friday, December 28, 2007

First impressions - "Spontaneous healing"

First impressions hereon will be a blog that would give my first impressions on any book I am reading/have read.

I came across the book "Spontaneous Healing" at Twice sold Tales, a second hand bookshop in Seattle. The first three chapters were gripping and discussed the importance of belief and faith in healing.
The book describes the author's journey for alternative medicinal practices that serve to treat the root cause of a disease rather than the sometimes superficial symptoms shown by a patient.
A wonderful account of the healings through "Osteopathy" is described. The medicinal benefits of herbal plants such as Gingko Bilaba and Bloody root are also given through many testimonials. The author mentions that testimonials are usually dismissed by the so-called modern allopathists because endorsing them could get them into trouble. But the author takes pains to explain that his exploration of the truth behind these testimonials have helped many of his patients (For instance, Bloody root being very helpful for benign/malignant moles that develop on skins).
Most of the case-studies presented are spontaneous remissions in cancer affected patients. This is something also discussed by Deepak Chopra in his book "Quantum Healing". Review of this book in a later blog.
The theme in both these books is that there are many cancer cases that are dismissed by doctors as untreatable, that is the cancer has become so deep-rooted in the organs of the patient's body that nothing short of a miracle can heal the patient. The books go onto say that when these miracles do happen, doctors dismiss them as rare cases. The two books emphasize that these so-called miraculous cases need to be investigated thoroughly because modern allopathic medicine fails to include one important component that is the basis of many alternative medicinal systems - Faith and belief of the patient in a cure and the body's ability to heal itself.