[.ca] Folk Medicine: A New England Almanac of Natural Health ... (ISBN 044920880X)

an old but good book:
I have an old copy of this book from the 70s.It was published in 1958 and is somewhat dated in some respects;but much of the advice is still usable today.I personally take vinegar and honey daily.I use only raw apple cider vinegar with the "mother" of vinegar,and unfiltered.You can get it at a natural foods supermarket.I also use dark raw unfiltered honey,these are the most nutritious and effective even though they are not specified in this old book.I havent been ill for 12 years,no colds or flu or digestive upsets.Did you know that apple cider vinegar will prevent food poisoning and travelers diarrhea? Its true! Just add a few teaspoons to a glass of bottled purified water and drink before eating a suspect meal.Get a 16 oz bottle of vinegar and take it with you!

bunkum and hooey:
When I first saw this book at my local pharmacy, my inner skeptic warned me that it would be a load of horse manure. He was wrong, of course; a load of horse manure will fertilize a garden nicely, while Dr. Jarvis' book is too light to even serve as a doorstop. A great deal of factual inaccuracy is forgivable, since the book itself was written before 1960 (however, his chapter on 'race' is not, especially from an alleged man of science...I gather that if you're not from Western Europe, you don't have anything to gain from it). The decision of Fawcett Crest to publish this as a medical guide rather than as a piece of folklore. (Notice that the prominent blurb on the cover is from the New York Daily News, a tabloid slightly more respectable than the Weekly World News). There's some value in folk remedies...but there are more of them that simply don't work, or that don't work as well as conventional medicine. While this book contains some interesting factoids about New England folk medicine, there are enough glaring errors and faulty assumptions to make the whole thing questionable, cover to cover.

Opened My Eyes!:
Once I read this book it opened my eyes to what folk medicine is really about. Just taking what you see in nature and applying it to your health is so simple,yet so perfect.

Excellent Book for those who disire good health:
I read this book a number of years ago and took the advise of Dr. Jarvis. I have been taking a combination of Apple Cider Vinegar and Honey for over 10 years now and have not been sick at all. I credit taking this mixture for my good health.

Don't Buy Any Other "Cider Book":
This book and Jarvis' other book on "Arthritis" should be read together. They cover the same topic and are complementary. Both record this classically trained M.D.'s experience coming to grips with and subsequently proving to his own satisfaction, the wisdom of Vermont Folk Medicine. All the other books have hardly any value besides telling you how to use vinegar for disinfecting, cleaning and household tasks (which are good, but secondary in my opinion). What little value they MIGHT have is because they have read and either quoted or plagiarized Jarvis. Sometimes because these people know more about typing than science, their statements on one hand present Jarvis' concepts then contradict it a few pages later by quoting some unproven babble. While I don't think his work is the end all of nutrition, I wish I had ten times as much information from his pen and notes as "fodder" for interacting with other nutritional studies. Unless you just want to know how to use vinegar to wash windows, these are the only "Apple Cider Vinegar" books I reccommend that I've seen on Amazon. There is one exception to this rule. You might also want Natural Healing with Cider Vinegar by Hellmiss too. These three are "IT". The rest will at best duplicate what you can get in these books or at worst, babble on incessantly. Mindell, while a top health writer, offers only a booklet with nothing much more to add to these three works. One topic Jarvis didn't address was the difference between the old fashioned apple cider vinegar which had many vital components retained and the filtered stuff which has been cleaned up to look nice but is the bottled equivalent of white flour... the good stuff has been taken out. Buy Jarvis, read the books and put the information to work!