When There Is No Doctor: Preventive and Emergency Healthcare in Uncertain Times

by Gerard S. Doyle

The fifth title in Process Self-Reliance series demystifies medical practices with a practical approach to twenty-first-century health and home medicine, particularly helpful in a financial downturn."When There Is No Doctor "is smartly designed and full of medical tips and emergency suggestions. At a time when our health system has become particularly susceptible to strain, it should be no further than an arm s reach away in your household."This is a book about sustainable health, primarily having to do with your health and what you can do to protect it in bad times certainly, but also in good. I will help you ensure the health of those you love, yourself and, should you so choose, your community, if and when the world changes." World "may come to mean your little town or the whole globe. It could change for a few days or weeks, or for a few years. It could change because of a flood, financial crisis, flu pandemic, or failure of our energy procurement, production or distribution systems.""I will not teach you to be a lone survivalist who anticipates doing an appendectomy on himself or a loved one on the kitchen table with a steak knife and a few spoons, although I will discuss techniques of austere and improvised medicine for really hard times."Gerard S. Doyle, MD, teaches and practices emergency medicine at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where he also plans the hospital s response to disasters."

Genres: Medical, Nonfiction, Medicine, Health, Reference, Science, Survival

196 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 1, 2010

Reviews

[Sheehan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty straight ahead emergency planning book, with a definite bent towards self-sufficiency in more dire gridcrash scenarios.

What I liked best about the book was the emphasis on prevention, hygiene and up-skilling in advance of crisis; the fewer problems you take into a descent the less hassles you will have to deal with healthwise when there may not be resources readily available to respond to long-term ailments.

The book is also effective in noting that most all preparedness aspects are useful in the immediate as well for more minor events and general health. Ironically, this book has been more motivating than most all of the diet/health/exercise-related books I have ever read this year. It places the hard to grasp long-term benefits of good health more clearly in the forefront, mitigating the more glaringly heinous, short-term costs of motivating/making time for exercise, sensible diet, sleep, etc. If you foresee a less hospitable future than the last century, and your current health can be a future liability, ignoring well-being in the immediate is a luxury one can't afford indulge.

Lastly, the book is better than others, because it's:
a) not filled with baseless assertions about the end of the world,
b) not just a bunch of actionable "buy this" lists,
c) more realistic in overlaying readers lifestyle and livelihoods in the present world with suggestions for how to (without going batshit crazy, depleting your bank account, and building a backyard bunker) prepare for alternative lifestyles without compromising your presence in the well-supported, albeit highly leveraged modern world we currently inhabit.

A healthy balance for once!

I think everyone should read this, and I'd like to think my local friends/family would entertain ongoing discussions and planning as a community.

[Tibby]

This was a great book to help me think about things that might be necessary to practice, decide, and purchase before there is a disaster. I thought it was going to be more of a manual I could refer to during a disaster, but it's almost exclusively about what to do to prepare.

I'm not, for the most part, paranoid about things like gridcrash or natural disasters, but the COVID-19 pandemic did get me thinking. We are also vulnerable to floods where we live and power outages happen with some regularity. Being in California it's also hard not to at least think about the possibility of wildfire.

I was impressed with the breadth of things Doyle offers to think about before it's an emergency (sick room protocol, staying put versus leaving, how to have supplies on hand and cycle them as they expire). This will be very useful for getting my family prepared for emergencies.

[Michi · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was hoping for something a little bit more detailed with regard to procedures and I do think that a lot of the advice given feels somewhat unrealistic for the average person to achieve (Doyle really is writing for an audience of people who are preparing for a total collapse and acting accordingly, so advice that would be just-about-enough for a temporary disaster and more easily achievable is not getting as much space as I was hoping). On the other hand, it is a good starting point for research and lists a bunch of other resources and it has definitely encouraged me to get our basic supplies in order (and familiarise myself with them) in the near-ish future.

[George · Rating 3 out of 5]

Halfway through this book, I got confused when it recommended "the classic book Where There Is No Doctor". Yerwhat, isn't that what I'm currently reading? Turns out I'd accidentally ordered a copy of an unrelated book called When There Is No Doctor. Whoops.

I'm still looking forward to reading Where There Is No Doctor and discovering what makes it a classic. But in the meantime, When There Is No Doctor is a fairly generic book about first aid and survival medicine that didn't teach me much that I didn't already know about these topics, and I don't even know that much.

[Beth · Rating 3 out of 5]

I felt this was more general first aid than what one might have hoped for, advanced methods of caring for things like broken bones and such in a place where there is no doctor and there isn't going to be, this is more triage. so NOT happy with how its presented. My opinion, others may vary.

[Lacey · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a good starting point although not a comprehensive work. There is more philosophy of "why" it's good to be prepared with a basic medical knowledge for uncertain times rather than the nuts and bolts of the knowledge you need. He lists good resources and also has several good lists of supplies to acquire.

[Joshua Friesen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good resource to have on hand.