Case Studies in Natural Medicine

Some would say that CAM is dominated by anecdote as it is – so why do we need a book that contains approximately 400 pages of case reports? The author would say because case reports are seriously undervalued and can, in fact, tell us a lot more than hard-nosed scientists tend to believe. Thus, he puts forward a sturdy defence of this type of evidence, and I must admit that he has several good points.

The book itself is a compilation of hundreds of published case reports, all related to similar scenarios: patient with condition or complaint X receives CAM treatment Y and improves. All the reports are fully referenced and thus can be looked up or referred to. Werbach undoubtedly has compiled an amazing collection. The remarkable thing is that there are no case reports in this book where the patient deteriorates. Not that such cases do not exist in the published literature – Werbach simply excludes them without comment.

While I agree that case reports (both ‘negative’ and ‘positive’ ones) can be immensely informative, I do not believe that this collection of case reports has this quality. Most of the cases compiled here lack sufficient detail to be truly instructive. Thus, the book degenerates into an endless celebration of the insufficient case reports. I am sure it will make exciting reading to some CAM enthusiast but, to be honest, it put me into a deep slumber.