Disease-Care Crisis.

[Guest guest]

http://www.doctoryourself.com/stoll.html

 

Disease-Care Crisis:

Walt Stoll, M.D.

 

There is something especially compelling about medical heretics. It was nearly

30 years ago that my life was forever changed, when Professor John Mosher at the

State University of New York asked me to read a particular book (now out of

print) by an English physician named Aubrey T. Westlake, M.D. The book was The

Pattern of Health, and for me it changed everything. Dr. Westlake wrote of his

long and unsatisfying experience as a medical practitioner. He said that during

his professional life, his work with patients had mostly been that of " bailing

out leaking boats. " I followed Dr. Westlake's narrative with increasing

fascination as he described his search for real healing. He ended up WAY

outside of conventional medicine. Yet Dr. Westlake, a fully qualified doctor of

medicine, saw his patients really get better when he used unorthodox, “holistic”

treatments. I could not simply disregard him; Westlake’s credentials were

impeccable. Why would he want to “go natural”?

The really subversive thing about reading books is that each good one leads to

many others. So it was with me. If there wasn't yet a medical blacklist or

" Index " listing all health heresy in print, I think I came reasonably close to

creating one during college and graduate school. I read and Who is Your Doctor

and Why, by Alonzo J. Shadman, M.D. I read Linus Pauling, Abram Hoffer, Wilfrid

and Evan Shute, Paavo Airola, Ewan Cameron, Robert Mendelssohn, Roger J.

Williams and the work of many other respected scientists. This eventually

persuaded me that natural healing was not only valid but was generally superior

to conventional drug-and-surgery medicine.

 

And always there remained the question: Why would a successful physician, who

has so extensively and expensively trained in allopathy (drug medicine), turn

his back on it?

It certainly was not for money, because medical doctors who recant pharmacology

tend to make a lot less money than those who stay and play the drug-and-cut

game. And it certainly was not for job security, for insurance companies and

state medical boards have a deep dislike for nutritional “quacks.” Holistic

doctors have a way of losing their licenses. I have met many who have.

The only motivation I could come up with for such a move was “because it helped

patients get better.” And this is consistent with what the dissenting doctors

all say. Perhaps they are telling the truth: there is a better way to run the

health-care railroad.

Did I say health-care? Well, there’s a national misnomer for you, and one that

Dr. Walt Stoll’s Saving Yourself from the Disease-Care Crisis immediately

corrects in its very title.

Saving Yourself is a powerful presentation of common-sense medicine, by a

medical doctor who has seen both sides, and writes: “I practiced strictly

conventional medicine for many years. I have taught conventional medicine (at

the University of Kentucky School of Medicine.) I personally had to cut my

income by four-fifths in order to practice holistic medicine.” (p 9, 10, 109.)

And why did he do it? Because it was a better way to help people get better.

Saving Yourself provides a dozen chapters that specifically address many common

conditions that are seen as difficult to cure medically but that respond well to

drugless treatment. These include colds and flu; allergies; adult and

children’s behavior disorders; atherosclerosis and cardiovascular disease;

Crohn’s disease, IBS and ulcerative colitis; endocrine conditions; fungal

overgrowth; hiatus hernia; and arthritis. In a future edition, I would like to

see this excellent section expanded to cover even more diseases.

The authority with which Dr. Stoll writes is effortless, based on his decades of

clinical observation of what consistently works with real patients. Saving

Yourself is much like having the doctor’s good sound advice, and his very

pleasant bedside manner to boot, right on your bookshelf. I like this book. I

like its no-nonsense attitude, the plentiful references to the scientific

literature, and the practical how-to sections. These include instruction on how

and why to avoid eating refined carbohydrates (p 147-8), how to choose a doctor

(p 120-127), and what amounts to a lesson in “do it yourself triage” to

determine when medical attention IS necessary (p 127-135). I also like how Dr.

Stoll takes the time to personally recommend valuable natural health books by

other authors all throughout the text, and in a fine Bibliography as well.

As a radically non-medical kind of guy, I do dissent with some of the views

offered in Saving Yourself. I think sutures can usually be avoided with

butterfly bandages, and I think Loperamide is not the ideal remedy for diarrhea.

And while hypodermic administration is critically discussed in Saving Yourself,

there is no mention of vaccination, pro or con. And I think his recommendation

of 2,000 mg of vitamin C daily is too low.

However, Dr Stoll’s emphasis on effective cost-efficient health care,

self-education, exercise and stress reduction receive my unqualified praise. So

do these right-on, uncompromising statements:

“The food industry profits from the (false) idea that food processing is not

injurious to the nation’s health…The medical/pharmaceutical complex profits from

illness… the sicker people are, the more money medical professionals make…The

disease insurance companies profit from illness.” (p 114)

Dr. Stoll refuses to call them “health insurance” companies. And with this, I

totally agree.

Dr. Stoll believes that our present disease-care system “will crumble of its own

weight. It is too bad that the whole country has to wait for that to happen.” (p

116)

Well, maybe not. Especially if more people start reading really good books like

Saving Yourself from the Disease-Care Crisis.

Saving Yourself from the Disease-Care Crisis

by Walt Stoll, MD (Published by the author, P.O. Box 12091, Panama City, FL

32401-9091. Telephone 1-800-464-7034. ISBN 0-9653171-0-2. 154 pages plus

references, bibliography and index, paperback.)

 

Review copyright 2002 and prior years by Andrew Saul, Number 8 Van Buren Street,

Holley, New York 14470 USA Telephone (585) 638-5357.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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