MEDICAL SELF-SERVICE
Samiran Nundy
Where There is No Doctor by Samiran Nundy Adapted for India by the Voluntary Health Asso¬ciation of India , 1982, 456 pp., 29.00
March-April 1982, volume 6, No 5

Seventeen years ago David Werner was a 30 year old biology teacher in the United States interested in the birds and plants of mountain areas. His travels took him to the mountains of Western Mexico where he came to know and love the mountain people. He shared their homes and their hardships. He discovered that the poor sometimes had to spend up to half their incomes on their health problems. They were treated by alien, authori¬tarian and paternalistic doctors who encouraged dependence and demanded servility and an unquestioning acceptance of their decisions. These doctors, moreover, often practiced downright bad medicine.

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