The subtitle is actually a better description of the book: How to Discover and Enhance Your Body’s Natural Ability to Maintain and Heal Itself. Interspersed throughout the book are several faces of healing, e.g. a patient whose let go attitude was followed by a drop in severe hypertension; a patient whose severe back pain disappeared following the initiation of an exercise program and the end of his marriage; a rheumatoid arthritis patient who recovered following a serendipitous bee sting.

Weil points out that case studies like those he cites are typically ignored by physicians, not taken seriously, not studied, not looked to as sources of information about the body’s potential to repair itself (p. 3). He describes Western medicine as the descendent of Asklepios, the Greek god of medicine, rather than of his daughter Hygeia, the goddess of health. Allopathic physicians pay homage to Hippocrates’ first admonition, do no harm, while ignoring his second, honour the healing power of nature (p. 36). They consider placebo effects nuisances whereas Weil regards them as the greatest therapeutic ally doctors can find in their efforts to mitigate disease (p. 52).

For Weil, the root of the problem rests in the education of Western physicians where such terms as healing systems are virtually unknown. Weil would teach future physicians alternative models of science and health, show them how to adopt lifestyles that would transform them into healthy role models for their patients, and instruct them in the body’s natural healing power. He would undercut the influence of insurance companies on physicians, and increase research on alternative medicine – placing the Office of Alternative Medicine in a new National Institute of Health and Healing.

Weil is not above using hyperbole; He speaks of miraculous cures (p. 84), suggests that guided imagery can turn around anything (p. 97), and claims that if remarkable recovery can happen in one person, it can happen in all (p. 85). Weil advocates hypnosis but the American Society of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis is excluded from his otherwise informative appendix. On the other hand, Weil’s knowledge of herbal medicine acquaints his readers with the virtues of ginkgo, ginger, bloodroot, the Chinese maitake mushroom, and the Ayurvedic herbs frankincense and ashwaganda.

This is a practical book, and Weil’s eight-week healing program Strategies of Successful Patients and his list of What Allopathic Medicine Can and Cannot Do are worth its price. Weil concludes with Prescriptions for Society, a compendium of suggestions that are so deeply embedded in common sense that their implementation is unlikely – unless Hygeia descends from Mount Olympus to assist in the reform of a medical education frozen in a disease-oriented mode (p. 277) and a medical practice that Weil finds imbued with overkill and pessimism (p. 60).

Categories: MentalHealth, General, SelfHelp