TOTAL HEALTH

by Morton Walker ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 1979

Walker is another advocate of holistic medicine who writes from the hooded perspective of the convert, nearly dismissing orthodox medicine as useless and extolling the virtues of his new-found faith. Less discriminating than, say, Herbert Benson (The Mind/Body Effect, p. 37), he endorses almost every alternative treatment: color therapy, hair analysis, EST, visualization. Although he sometimes qualifies the value of each, he includes as examples only dramatic, almost miraculous reversals--from drooling senility to new-life-at-ninety cases. He believes in special diets and laetrile to cure cancer, prefers megavitamins for schizophrenia, favors synthetic amino acids to reverse hardening of the arteries (although the only studies have been done on animals), and recommends an anti-aging therapy that calls for swallowing daily, on a empty stomach, a raw egg yolk. (And not just any egg yolk--it must come from an incubated chick that ""struggled for survivalS'). His open-hearted approval of every non-establishment mode is misleading: he groups together increasingly-recognized treatments with unvalidated ones, and uses testimonials from people as different as Linus Pauling and Cindy Marshall (of ""Laverne and Shirley"") as ballast. Better to stick to Benson who can distinguish the tried from the tested and who doesn't make health policies a them-and-us issue.

Pub Date: March 1, 1979

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Everest House

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1979

Categories: NONFICTION