Bookshelf

Dr. Terrell was a voracious reader and displayed a wide range of interests within his personal library from medicine to history to theology to palm trees. Below is a sampling of some of his books as well as some of his published book reviews.

The Colony is a history of the large leper colony from its inception in 1866 up through the present. It is not a pretty story. Anyone entertaining the benefits of a politically managed medical enterprise will find no comfort here. These exiled unfortunates suffered from pillage, rape, neglect, malnutrition, violence, and exposure. Slapdash diagnosis by government-hired doctors resulted in perhaps a majority not even having the disease for which they were expelled from mainstream society.

Those lepers who fared best were those who were able to exert some influence over their treatment through outside contacts or financial resources. Those who had neither, the majority, were at the often inadequate mercy of the government.

Read more of Dr. Terrell's book review here.
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Excerpt from Physician and Pastor: Co-Laborers

Sherwin Nuland in his book, Doctors, in a chapter on the unfortunate story of Ignaz Semmelweis says, “Even had Semmelweis’ explanation of seasonal variations [that is, how they fit into his theory] been generally available, however, it is doubtful that it would have been accepted. No matter the progress that had by then been made in pathologic anatomy and physical diagnosis, Western medicine still lived with various stunted vestiges of ancient theories of disease etiology, like miasmas and vague constitutional imbalances. Concepts of single causative agents, which would enter the arena with the advent of the germ theory less than two decades later, were only barely construed, if at all. There was little precedent for a doctrine that invoked the direct action of invisible particles of putrid organic matter. To many critics, it would take a leap of faith which they were unable or unwilling to make.”

Not long after his death Semmelweis was proven very substantially correct. The germ theory took root. It is a powerful concept. Great things have been accomplished in medicine by application of this theory. Ask today what the cause of pulmonary tuberculosis is, and nearly every physician will answer, “Mycobacterium TB” or one of the other Mycobacteriaceae. More than just for infectious disease, the germ theory is typical of a set of models which posit a material cause for each disease.
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Medical orthodoxy has for more than a century distanced itself from quackery by reference to its evidence, logic, and obeisance to professional standards, yet our actual performance has partaken of a good deal more than these, as well as sometimes less. How do physicians meld the welter of particulars in each patient’s situation into an actionable diagnosis?

The answer Dr. Jerome Groopman offers [in How Doctors Think] is that it is a very complex process with many pitfalls. He has the temerity to try to explain our variable processes, including our failures, not only to physicians, but to nonphysicians as well. He largely succeeds.

Read more of Dr. Terrell's book review here.

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Contentment looks to God and sees Him as the One who provides. The old word for this is “Providence.” What happens to us is what God has provided for. To recognize that our situation is from God is to recall that He is sovereign. It doesn’t mean that when our situation is unpleasant, when we are under some kind of affliction, that we don’t feel afflicted. He is not requiring us to be insensitive to afflictions. The grace of contentment is that we do not rail and chafe at the trouble.

Contentment means trusting God to work things out even when we have no idea how He is doing it.

Read more of Dr. Terrell's thoughts on contentment here.
 
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With this book Dr. Nortin Hadler extends his strong arguments against medical practices that have grown far beyond reasonable scientific underpinning. His earlier book, The Last Well Person, overlaps somewhat with this volume.

Enticed by money and power, main- stream medicine in the United States is engaging in an expensive, dangerous, fruitless application of unproven remedies, Hadler writes. He is not trimming off some fringe practices. His chief weapon is an exposé of the trivial reductions in the absolute in risk of disease, and its inverse, the outrageously high “number needed to treat.”

Read more of Dr. Terrell's book review here.
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In 1918, when medical science was unlocking the mysteries of killers like polio, malaria, and yellow fever, a deadly influenza attacked. The disease struck down millions worldwide while scientists frantically searched for answers. It was a terrifying disease for it killed the young with ferocity; there was no known cause, no known methods to avoid infection and no known cure.

The story, told by John Barry in his book The Great Influenza, is more than a story about the flu; it is a story about truth. Can science bring us absolute truth? Are man's powers of observation capable of discovering information that is an accurate picture of reality free from further doubt? As Barry wrote, "How do we know when we know?"

Read more of Dr. Terrell's thought on truth here.

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While he didn't publish a review on this book, A Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman was one he enjoyed and recommended to others.

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It is an uncommon textbook that can span the distance between neophyte and maestro. Nonetheless, this latest edition of Sapira’s Bedside Diagnosis easily manages that stretch.

In not quite 700 text pages this volume covers the interview, detailed examination of each body part and system, and the clinical reasoning that makes sense of these data.

Orient is the editorial philosopher’s stone, changing into gold what in some other texts is leaden prose.

Read more of Dr. Terrell's book review here.
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Competent to Counsel as well as A Theology of Christian Counseling and The Christian Counselor's Manual, all by Dr. Jay Adams, were favorites on Dr. Terrell's bookshelf. Adams was influential in Dr. Terrell's life by introducing him to a Biblical alternative to the psychology in which he had earned a doctorate. Dr. Terrell came to see Christian psychology as a misnomer. While Dr. Terrell did not deny the influence of physical causes for behavioral problems, he also did not elevate physical causes over spiritual causes. He believed body and soul were united and should be treated in unity.