A concise history of scientific medicine. Copiously illustrated. There is probably no more fascinating story than that of the rise of scientific medicine. Its beginnings were in mystery and superstition; its progress encumbered with ignorance and quackery. Above these it has risen to become the most beneficent science of the modern world.

Mystery, Magic, and Medicine explores the reasons for the failure of the conventional medical system in healing many chronic and very common conditions. It explains the interaction of the physical body and a person's energy system and how certain intense emotions can destabilize the body which later becomes various physical diseases. These conditions are common, such as asthma, diabetes, menstrual problems, irritable bowel syndrome, fibromyalgia, and many more. The root cause of many of these conditions is intense negative emotional energy. This book introduces the theory behind Easley Energy Therapy, a new method of rapidly correcting energy imbalances using micro-current electrical impulses which the average person can employ effectively. The author developed this system through many years of clinical work, gaining a reputation in the city in which he worked as the go-to doctor when everything else fails to help. This is the theory behind the treatment that has seen: a woman with fibromyalgia experiencing her first week without pain in 26 years, a woman with anorexia nervosa got off the table hungry and go out for lunch, a diabetic's blood sugar level drop 200 points in 4 treatments, carpal tunnel syndrome resolved in 2 treatments, severe and chronic menstrual bleeding that had been going on for years also stopped after 1 treatment, and many other similar results in conditions that conventional medicine can only cover up with drugs. If you are a health care professional longing to be able to facilitate such results for your patients, this book is for you. Similarly, if the health care system has failed to address your condition or that of a loved one beyond masking it with painkillers and other drugs, this book is also for you.

Medical expert Paul A. Offit, M.D., offers a scathing exposé of the alternative medicine industry, revealing how even though some popular therapies are remarkably helpful due to the placebo response, many of them are ineffective, expensive, and even deadly. Dr. Offit reveals how alternative medicine—an unregulated industry under no legal obligation to prove its claims or admit its risks—can actually be harmful to our health. Using dramatic real-life stories, Offit separates the sense from the nonsense, showing why any therapy—alternative or traditional—should be scrutinized. He also shows how some nontraditional methods can do a great deal of good, in some cases exceeding therapies offered by conventional practitioners. An outspoken advocate for science-based health advocacy who is not afraid to take on media celebrities who promote alternative practices, Dr. Offit advises, “There’s no such thing as alternative medicine. There’s only medicine that works and medicine that doesn’t.”

This absorbing account of the evolution of modern medicine from its roots in folk medicine will entertain and inform both scientist and general reader alike. It explains the chemical basis of pharmacology, and provides a fascinating description of how the use and abuse of natural products in various societies throughout the ages has led to the development of many of the drugs we now take for granted.