3 out of 4 stars
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Self-Examination by V K Grover is a book in the non-fiction genre. This book provides an interesting insight into alternative diagnostic and healing practices.
The book focuses on traditional medicine practiced in the East, specifically Chinese and Indian techniques. The author’s objective in penning down this book is to help the reader identify symptoms of various diseases and ailments, by observing their eyes, ears, tongue, nails, fingers, skin, and pulse. The author also recommends some techniques like acupressure to cure minor maladies at home, before heading to the doctor or popping the pill.
The book has been divided into ten chapters, where most of the chapters focus on a particular body part, for example the eyes, and how the reader can observe the particular organ to examine their health and try alternative healing methods, if available. The rest of the chapters focus on some specific healing techniques, such as Shiatsu and Reiki.
The author provides a wide array of well-labeled diagrams and pictures, to aid the reader and complement the extensive information given in the book. Coming to the writing style, the sections start with how to recognize the symptoms reflected in the body part, what these symptoms indicate, when should the reader contact a physician, how to prevent the particular malaise, and an exposition on alternative cure for the same. The book provides step-by-step instructions on how to analyze the organs, for instance, not hanging out the tongue for more than fifteen seconds as that would alter the color and make identification of symptoms difficult.
There are some interesting facts in the book as well, for example, wearing ornaments in the ear, which is nothing new to Indian and Chinese culture, not only serves a decorative purpose but is a proven acupuncture technique too; or how the tongue represents the entire gastrointestinal tract.
Despite the vast information highlighted in this book, there were a number of factors that obstructed the absorption of this information. The formatting was a huge let down. Starting with the alignment of paragraphs, to proper division of sections, to fluctuating font style and sizes, unnecessary capitalization of words in the middle of sentences; there were a quite a few irritating errors in this book. Also, there are places where the author writes about different constitutions in Ayurveda, but he doesn’t provide a sufficient background on the same, which can confuse readers unfamiliar with Ayurveda and Pranic healing.
The book packs in some good material on self-diagnosis in a few pages; however, poor editing gives the book an appearance of a rough draft or collection of notes. Therefore, I give this book 3 out of 4 stars.
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Self Examination
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