The era of self-help and consumerism have come together in recent years, and a number of books have been written in an attempt to demystify health and disease. Martin begins this effort with a disclaimer that this book is not meant to replace regular medical care, but rather to supplement it.
The concept is good, and the attempt is a noble one, but it falls short rather quickly. Some books have presented this material in the do-it-yourself style of the late 1960s with lots of simple diagrams. Others have tried the encyclopedic approach. This particular book is, in some ways, a mixture of both approaches but, it does not quite match up to either.
There are a few diagrams in the first two chapters that actually add little, and one that demonstrates removal of a foreign body from the eye is totally irrelevant to the text (p 8).
The tone