From the Bookshelf

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.

From the Bookshelf

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?"

This is a great book that Dr. Terrell enjoyed, and one that draws attention to his ideas of truth in science. Read more of his thoughts on truth here.

From the Bookshelf

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.

From the Bookshelf

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.

From the Bookshelf

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.

Contentment

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.

Excerpt from "Contentment"