Drawing vibrant connections between the colonization of whole nations, the health of the mountainsides and the abuse of individual women, children and men, Medicine Stories offers the paradigm of integrity as a political model to people who hunger for a world of justice, health and love.

Experience the extraordinary potential that stories hold-the power to heal, calm, and rejuvenate. This magical collection of more than 40 tales from around the world brims with wise words that illustrate many mysterious and sometimes simple ways to wellness and happiness. Through introductions, comments, and discussion starters, Livo provides guidance for reading and reflecting on each tale. The stories are organized into four main areas: healing the self, healing relationships, healing the community, and healing the Earth. In addition to an extensive bibliography, Livo offers a treasure trove of traditional proverbs and old-time herblore. An absolutely wonderful reading experience and resource for educators, parents, students, librarians, folklorists, storytellers, medical professionals, therapists, and anyone interested in folktales and healing. All Levels.

Narrative medicine emerged in response to a commodified health care system that places corporate and bureaucratic concerns over the needs of the patient. This book provides an introduction to the principles of narrative medicine and guidance for implementing narrative methods.

Everyone has a story, but too often, daily living gets in the way of your ability to make your life the story you want to live. Passion and true desire get squeezed out. The distractions and addictions abound and before you know it, your hand becomes a device, the eyes dim a little more each day, and an unexplainable emptiness sets in. You may feel stuck with no options for change, but all is not lost. For eons, stories have been the way we make sense of our own lives, build community, and grow together as makers and creators of the stories we want to live. Story as Medicine is a book that takes people on a journey to the heart of their own stories. Many different awareness techniques and creative explorations open the process to live your full potential. You get to weave your inner story. The journey you take becomes a fulfilling way to experience life. Our stories guide and inform the creative story each of us is uniquely living. In the sharing of stories in a "Story as Medicine" way, something magical happens. We are touched, fed, inspired, and healed. Story becomes medicine.

A riveting exploration of the most difficult and important part of what doctors do, by Yale School of Medicine physician Dr. Lisa Sanders, author of the monthly New York Times Magazine column "Diagnosis," the inspiration for the hit Fox TV series House, M.D. "The experience of being ill can be like waking up in a foreign country. Life, as you formerly knew it, is on hold while you travel through this other world as unknown as it is unexpected. When I see patients in the hospital or in my office who are suddenly, surprisingly ill, what they really want to know is, ‘What is wrong with me?’ They want a road map that will help them manage their new surroundings. The ability to give this unnerving and unfamiliar place a name, to know it—on some level—restores a measure of control, independent of whether or not that diagnosis comes attached to a cure. Because, even today, a diagnosis is frequently all a good doctor has to offer." A healthy young man suddenly loses his memory—making him unable to remember the events of each passing hour. Two patients diagnosed with Lyme disease improve after antibiotic treatment—only to have their symptoms mysteriously return. A young woman lies dying in the ICU—bleeding, jaundiced, incoherent—and none of her doctors know what is killing her. In Every Patient Tells a Story, Dr. Lisa Sanders takes us bedside to witness the process of solving these and other diagnostic dilemmas, providing a firsthand account of the expertise and intuition that lead a doctor to make the right diagnosis. Never in human history have doctors had the knowledge, the tools, and the skills that they have today to diagnose illness and disease. And yet mistakes are made, diagnoses missed, symptoms or tests misunderstood. In this high-tech world of modern medicine, Sanders shows us that knowledge, while essential, is not sufficient to unravel the complexities of illness. She presents an unflinching look inside the detective story that marks nearly every illness—the diagnosis—revealing the combination of uncertainty and intrigue that doctors face when confronting patients who are sick or dying. Through dramatic stories of patients with baffling symptoms, Sanders portrays the absolute necessity and surprising difficulties of getting the patient’s story, the challenges of the physical exam, the pitfalls of doctor-to-doctor communication, the vagaries of tests, and the near calamity of diagnostic errors. In Every Patient Tells a Story, Dr. Sanders chronicles the real-life drama of doctors solving these difficult medical mysteries that not only illustrate the art and science of diagnosis, but often save the patients’ lives.

Autobiography of Jack Dreyfus, his battle with depression, its treatment with Dilantin (clinical name: Phenytoin, or Diphenylhydantoin), and his efforts to publicize the use of phenytoin to effectively treat depression, anger, behavior disorders, and a variety of other medical applications and treatments.

Seeks to restore the pivotal role of the patient’s own story in the healing process • Shows how conventional medicine tends to ignore the account of the patient • Presents case histories where disease is addressed and healed through the narrative process • Proposes a reinvention of medicine to include the indigenous healing methods that for thousands of years have drawn their effectiveness from telling and listening Modern medicine, with its high-tech and managed-care approach, has eliminated much of what constitutes the art of healing: those elements of doctoring that go beyond the medications prescribed. The typically brief office visit leaves little time for doctors to listen to their patients, though it is in these narratives that disease is both revealed and perpetuated--and can be released and treated. Lewis Mehl-Madrona’s Narrative Medicine examines the foundations of the indigenous use of story as a healing modality. Citing numerous case histories that demonstrate the profound power of narrative in healing, the author shows how when we learn to dialogue with disease, we come to understand the power of the “story” we tell about our illness and our possibilities for better health. He shows how this approach also includes examining our relationships to our extended community to find any underlying disharmony that may need healing. Mehl-Madrona points the way to a new model of medicine--a health care system that draws its effectiveness from listening to the healing wisdom of the past and also to the present-day voices of its patients.