Books
Jerome Groopman, M.D., is a distinguished Harvard medical professor, staff writer at The New Yorker and author of best-selling books—-Second Opinion, Anatomy of Hope and How Doctors Think.

He is a physician who writes about the areas of medicine patients need to know about….but few physicians know how to tell them.

For instance, very few academicians could produce a book as readable as How Doctors Think.

He is the doctor you’d like to have if you had cancer.

Therefore, with his track-record in mind, you can see why he’d be a good choice to review a new book likely to get a lot of attention, one about the mind-body connection.

Down deep, don’t we all have our little private beliefs about sickness and health—-or what made us so sick this time? Perhaps these are beliefs you would not share with anyone but your closest friend. “I know I got cancer because of the divorce.” Or, perhaps, you are a missionary about the many ways our emotions connect to our bodies and vice versa. If so, your goal is to shake traditonal medical practitioners into coming into the 21st century with you—-even if you have to grab them by the lapels of their white coats to and drag them.

Learning the history can only be helpful, whatever your position.

The New York Times:

From The New York Times Sunday Book Review: The Cure Within: A History of Mind-Body Medicine, by Anne Harrington, Norton Press, $25.95, reviewed by Jerome Groopman, M.D.

In my work as a specialist in cancer, blood diseases and AIDS, hardly a week goes by when patients do not bring up the above interventions, as well as Buddhist meditation, qigong, acupuncture, megavitamins and macrobiotic diets. In “The Cure Within,” her splendid history of mind-body medicine, Anne Harrington tries to explain why we draw connections between emotions and illness, and helps trace how today’s myriad alternative and complementary treatments came to be. A professor and chairman of the history of science department at Harvard, Harrington has produced a book that desperately needed to be written. Some 60 million Americans use these therapies in the effort to combat serious diseases like cancer and AIDS, as well as the normal physiology of aging. In the United States, office visits to providers of complementary and alternative medicine now outnumber visits to primary care physicians. The costs of such care approach $40 billion dollars a year. Books, talk shows and Web sites present riveting testimonials of clinical benefits from Eastern breathing techniques, dietary supplements, positive thinking and prayer.” (Emphasis added)

Source: The New York Times Book Review, January 28, 2008