In this collection of essays you will read of the issues surrounding healing and medicine, both traditional and alternative, in the 21st century. They were originally published in Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine.

They form a strange magic. Magic because there is so little we know of the power of the human mind. Magic because we know so little of the healing available from our environment and universe. To the majority of people, healing beyond the body is still a mysterious thing.

Larry Dossey is an internal physician and well-known advocate of holistic medicine. His medical journey has taken him from the battlefields of Vietnam, to chief of staff at the Medical City Dallas Hospital, and Hillary Clinton’s task force on health care reform. He is simultaneously a wide and deep thinker on wellness and healing. One might say he is a coach for broader thinking in both patients and practitioners.

These essays are written in a delightfully accessible style, with a philosophical approach and frequent wry humour.

Dr. Dossey proceeds from the big question of ‘meaning’ in illness and guides the reader through a journey that takes in his own and others’ experiences with medicine, fishing, coincidence, prayer, shamanism, love, and much more besides. This is a lucky dip of a volume where every parcel is a winner.

There are three broad sections on Meaning, Mind and Nonlocality.

In Meaning, the author ponders the many values attached to illness. These can be from the point-of-view of the patient, the practitioner or the funding authorities. He looks at the strange ways that orthodox medical healers are trained and his own experiences as an intern and as a battalion surgeon in Vietnam. He puzzles over where the real healers have gone. The essay ‘The Eating Papers’ is sure to tease and push the reader beyond the body.

When considering Mind in healing, Dr. Dossey calls for a ‘re-enchantment’ of the world. This section is replete with synchronicities and serendipity, both of a personal nature and also from historical and contemporary accounts. We are asked to admit that much of the spirit has been lost in the emergence of the industrial/mechanical age and onwards.

A curious section, and fascinating, is how inanimate objects can occasionally take on living attributes. Like the Hope Diamond, some objects can take on what seems like revenge, bad luck, or outright cursing. Others can be lucky. Our ancestors were well aware of this and the author gives many examples which will make the reader’s jaw drop.

In the essay ‘Tickled Pink’ we begin to see and understand how important humour and happiness is to our health. The nature of genius and creative talent is also examined.

Worth the price of the book alone is the essay ‘Trout Mind’, which examines the philosophical aspects of fishing. This is one that can be read over and over. Along with more famous works on fishing, it lifts the reader out of the mundane into a far more rarefied place. As committed anglers know, fishing is a very healing and humbling experience, full of life lessons distilled in a day.

The last large section is on Nonlocality. In relation to healing and medicine, this takes in the mysterious healing that disregards time and space. It considers prescient knowledge by patients of their own disorders. It also looks at remote healing, animals as therapy, the healing infusion of love and joy as well as many other inexplicable healing encounters.

A large and important section here deals with the healing power of prayer. This is an area for which Dr. Dossey is well known and he leaves the reader in no doubt that orthodox medicine is in dire need of re-spiritualisation.

Other factors in Nonlocality and healing are physical exercise and music. Chaos theory also rears its rather pretty head, as well as science and the unconscious. I am pleased to report that the author deals very well with Jung and the archetypes as well as the universal unconscious, giving many pertinent examples from literature and research that take in cultural and mystical themes.

Dr. Dossey next considers creativity and how it happens, managing to treat these mysterious phenomena as possible for all, while still conveying his sense of wonder at the diversity of experience. The curious tales of savants and how they are able to dip into the cosmic soup is strange and compelling.

In the final essay, ‘Immortality’, the future of medicine and human immortality is treated by looking at what science is doing and what may be going on inside the individual. The divine and non-local aspects of the soul versus mind is engaged here and gives much food for thought.

This collection has a first rate coverage of all facets of holistic medicine, as well as the philosophical underpinnings of complementary therapies which are emerging in this century as more important than ever.

Dr. Dossey has given his personal witness to many magical occurrences in medicine that we find mysterious.

I enjoyed this collection immensely and would recommend it to readers on a number of levels. If you are interested in your own wellness and how to maintain it, read this book. If you are dissatisfied with orthodox medicine, but don’t want to reject it out of hand, read this book. If you think that there is much we can learn from ancient wisdom, read this book.

I cannot recommend this collection of essays strongly enough. The whole volume is inspiring and energising. Don’t go to hospital without it!

– Reviewed by Jennifer Hoskins in New Dawn No. 90