I find this book to be a good teaching text. It covers the basic assessment instruments in a reader-friendly style. Excellent resource.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I usually hate history books. It describes all the details of the characters and the time period and really made me feel like I was there, too. I have hated history ever since it was required in college, but this story and the detailed characters have made me long to understand more of the actions of the people involved and I'm now voluntarily going to look into more books on the lives and times of the main kings involved: Henry VIII and Louis XII. I definitely recommend it!

Whitlock examines both "traditional" and "alternative" medical practices with results that are hit and miss. He 'hits' the HMO debacle right on the head, and his discussion of his mother's experience with and subsequent death due to HMO 'mangled care' will certainly hit a resonant chord with many. Unfortunately, his bias towards 'traditional' medicine and the medical establishment is obvious in his discussion of everything from chiropractic care to therapeutic touch. Chiropractors are little more than cheats and charletans, according to Whitlock and his proof that therapeutic touch is bogus? - a ninth grade science fair project. I doubt that had a science fair project had positive results, it would have been cited as proof that an alternative modality works. If you are looking for a balanced, unbiased assessment of both traditional and alternative medical practices, this isn't the book for you.

Chuck Whitlock begins with a horrific tale about John Ronald "Butcher" Brown, whom he dubs "America's worst doctor." Dr. Brown comes to final light in 1998 after butchering an amputation job in a National City, California hotel room. The victim, 79-year-old Philip Bondy, was found dead with blood everywhere and his face "frozen in a twisted mask of pain." (p. 24) Turns out that Bondy was just a stand-in for his Jungian shrink, one Dr. Gregg Furth who first sought the operation for himself. It seems that both he and his patient suffered from "a fetish or paraphilia known as apotemnophilia." Whitlock explains: "The fetish is also referred to as a self-demand amputation, and involves primarily men who wish to have amputation of a lower extremity for psychological and sometimes sexual reasons. Dr. Furth stated he had been aware of wanting his own leg removed since his early childhood." (p. 29)

Whitlock, who has appeared on TV's Oprah, Regis and Kathie Lee, Hard Copy, Extra and Inside Edition, follows this with Chapter 2, "A Brief History of MediScams: From Snake Oil to Cancer Quackery." Then he returns to contemporary times and shares what he has found out about "Dangerous Doctors," managed care, nursing homes, "Dental MediScams," etc. He comes down heavily on incompetent and fake doctors and on the medical profession for not weeding them out. Seems that you have to be a combination of Dr. Dracula and the Son of Sam to get the profession to notice that you've gone astray. He also goes after bogus cures and questions the efficacy of some alternative medical approaches. There's a chapter on the placebo effect including some material about the so-called psychic healers of the Philippines. Chapter 12, which he subtitles, "Buying a Pig in a Poke" is on food supplements. Another chapter is on just how botched things can get in the world of plastic surgery. A chapter on nursing homes is alternately titled, "Warehouses for the Elderly?"

All in all this is a breezy read and a good, if a bit stringent, intro into the dangers that face the unaware in medical land. There is a "resources" appendix with websites and a Bibliography (no index).

Buy this for your medically innocent friends and relatives before they are initiated into the realities of medical science and pseudoscience the hard and expensive way.

This book is an unusual combination of amazing stories and very, very practical advice. It is both entertaining while giving excellent warnings and tips on how to avoid being taken advantage of. Some of the information is both shocking and disturbing, but very sound advice. Anyone frustrated with their doctor or an HMO will find it especially enlightening. Some of the examples of quacks literally had me slack-jawed.