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.