Nice compliment, thank you Jim!
I'm not sure what book/s to recommend. My own knowledge has been gleaned over many years in many forums (I'm long in the tooth by now) - starting with a particularly good professor of zoology at Rhodes University back in the 60s!!! I'm also insatiably curious about how things work, and have signed up for courses to absorb more...so I've Master's degree work in cell physiology and biochemistry for example, and courses in parasitology and microbiology. And I avidly read the research as it comes out. One thing that good "Prof A" (Allanson but he was always Prof A) taught me, is how to assess research for validity or flaws. An invaluable tool.
All this to make an excuse as to why I am not up on current books.
One suggestion: Be sure you can read and interpret blood work. I work mostly with animals and blood work gives away a lot of secrets, including ones a human MAY be able to vocalize.
A book on this:
Veterinary Hematology and Clinical Chemistry: Text and Clinical Case ... By Mary Anna Thrall, Dale C. Baker, Terry W. Campbell, Dennis B. DeNicol
To find good books, it can help to do a search on a particularly in depth question on google, and see if some books come up with excerpts to read on line, to see if the book is well written and the complex question has an understandable answer. (Good scientists are not always good writers).
I use bloodwork to double-check a vet's diagnosis (one soon learns vets do NOT keep up with research and use outdated methods or whatever they learned in vet school) and make sure I read and understand the research on any illness that presents to me from a client.(Again I am more up on animals and you'd likely want human illnesses.) That way I can use both illness pathology knowledge and bloodwork knowledge of what it is doing internally.
Here's an example of why the in depth understanding of blood work for a species really matters:
A cat presents with bloodwork showing 3 out of four markers (and all 4 need to be present) for a particular illness. The missing one is "globulin over the upper limit" and this cat has globulin in high normal range making the suspected illness not possible.
Except:
It helps to know that cat metabolism handles globulins differently from humans, dogs and other species. In cats globulins are bound to amylase before excretion, making a giant molecule. That normally does not interfere with tests but if kidney disease is ALSO present, the huge molecule of amylase-globulin cannot be excreted through the damaged kidney, and it accumulates in the blood. The bloodwork result is:
Amylase reading is very high and the lab test finds it all (as the lab test for amylase looks for actual amylase and sees all that retained amylase that is bound to globulin).
BUT - globulin will show lower than it really is (because the lab test for globulin looks for it by molecule size and MISSES all the bound-to-amylase globulin.)
Amylase shows HIGH when it really is likely normal, but just accumulated due to kidney damage.
An INCORRECT interpretation of this bloodwork, will exclude the disease with four markers (which really IS the disease shown by the bloodwork if it is understood well - positive for all four markers when you remember the amylase-globulin issue in cats) and will mistakenly consider the high amylase as an alarm. High amylase in other species can indicate pancreatitis. But that is a misdiagnosis in cats.
High amylase is actually the way to see kidney damage in cats.
SO in THIS EXAMPLE WITH THE CORRECT KNOWLEDGE OF HOW TO READ BLOOD WORK - YOU WILL LOOK FOR RUBRICS FOR KIDNEY DISEASE AND FOR THE FIRST ILLNESS NEEDING FOUR MARKERS.
And NOT for "pancreatitis" (which in cats requires an amylase AND lipase both more than double the upper range limit.)
If you just go with the misdiagnosis of pancreatitis here, the cat will die in under two weeks no matter how well your remedy covers pancreatitis plus whatever presenting symptoms are present.
Instead you need kidney rubrics, presenting disease rubrics and visible symptoms - and that will get you the right remedy.
Keeping up on both animal and human research is doable on line - use the internet's power! Just be sure whatever you look up is genuine research and not mere opinion.
Here's one good place to do that; it's the National Library of Medicine free online abstract summaries of scientific studies worldwide with an English "abstract" summary (and they tell you where to find the full length research papers ...these usually cost money, so choose carefully which to follow up based on the abstracts which are in themselves often useful). It has a search and advanced search feature:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed
When you read research you like - see if any of those guys wrote a book on a relevant area for you.
My policy has always been to check for new research on any new case of a complex illness, and also on any case that is going less well than I like.
Sorry that I am out of touch on ideal books esp for human use.
I hope these ideas help you find some.
Namaste,
Irene
REPLY TO: only
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Irene de Villiers, B.Sc AASCA MCSSA D.I.Hom/D.Vet.Hom.
P.O. Box 4703 Spokane WA 99220.
www.angelfire.com/fl/furryboots/clickhere.html (Veterinary Homeopath.)
"Man who say it cannot be done should not interrupt one doing it."
