How and When to Be Your Own Doctor A Wellness Guide By Yourself

This book was written to help educate the general public about the virtues of natural medicine and to encourage the next generation of natural healers.

I was a physically tough, happy-go-lucky fellow until I reached my late thirties. Then I began to experience more and more off days when I did not feel quite right. I thought I possessed an iron constitution. Although I grew a big food garden and ate mostly "vegetablitarian" I thought I could eat anything with impunity. I had been fond of drinking beer with my friends while nibbling on salty snacks or heavy foods late into the night. And until my health began to weaken I could still get up the next morning after several homebrewed beers, feeling good, and would put in a solid day's work.

When my health began to slip I went looking for a cure. Up to that time the only use I'd had for doctors was to fix a few traumatic injuries. The only preventative health care I concerned myself with was to take a multivitamin pill during those rare spells when I felt a bit run down and to eat lots of vegetables. So I'd not learned much about alternative health care.
Naturally, my first stop was a local general practitioner/MD. He gave me his usual half-hour get-acquainted checkout and opined that there almost certainly was nothing wrong with me. I suspect I had the good fortune to encounter an honest doctor, because he also said if it were my wish he could send me around for numerous tests but most likely these would not reveal anything either. More than likely, all that was wrong was that I was approaching 40; with the onset of middle age I would naturally have more aches and pains. 'Take some aspirin and get used to it, ' was his advice. 'It'll only get worse.'

Finally, I should mention that over the years since this book was written I have discovered contains some significant errors of anatomical or psysiological detail. Most of these happened because the book was written "off the top of Isabelle's head," without any reference materials at hand, not even an anatomy text. I have not fixed these goofs as I am not even qualified to find them all. Thus, when the reader reads such as 'the pancreas secreates enzymes into the stomach, ' (actually and correctly, the duodenum) I hope they will understand and not invalidate the entire book.

[AUTHORS]

Dr. Isabelle Moser was born on 1940 and died in 1996. The greatest accomplishment of her 56 year was to meld virtually all available knowledge about health and healing into a workable and most importantly.

Steve Solomon is a well-known west coast gardening guru, and author of five previous books. The founder of Territorial Seed Company, he has taught Master Gardener and Urban Farm classes at the University of Oregon in Eugene.