Selfsufficientish.com

That's what I call my library.. the library of liberation... some in it that pertain to self-sufficiency that I couldn't live without..

Shelter
Home Work - Handbuilt Shelter
Dwellings
The Hand-Sculpted House
The Cobber's Companion
The Cob Builders Handbook
Building with Cob
How to build the best hot tub ever
Cob Building
A Shelter Sketchbook
Building a Low Impact Roundhouse
Creative Country Construction
The Natural Plasterbook
Earth Structures and Construction in Scotland
Building with Hemp
The Art of Natural Building
The whole Earthship Series and every book by Mike Reynolds
Ceramic Houses and Earth Architecture.
Build your own earth oven
Lorena Stoves
Rocket Stoves
Creating an Oasis with Greywater
Rainwater Catchment Systems
Natural Stain Remover
Art and Science of Dumpster Diving
A Scots Herbal
Permaculture in Temperate Climates - Earthcare Manual
Bartram's Encyclopaedia of Herbal Medicine
Tree Medicine
Flora Celtica
Humanure Handbook
Forest Gardening
Edible Forest Gardens Volume I & II
How to make a Forest Garden
Food from the Wild
Food for Free
Wild Food - Roger Phillips
ALL of Roger Phillips Identification Books
Medicinal Herbs in the Garden, Field & Marketplace
Plants for a Future
John Seymours Self-sufficiency
Seed to Seed
Cottage Economy
The Yurt Handbook
U.S. Army Survival Manual
Low Impact Development
Wildwood Wisdom
Shelters, Shacks & Shanties
Root Cellaring
Nature's Pharmacy for Children
The Lost Language of Plants
Healing Threads - Traditional Medicines of the Highlands & Islands
Any and All of the Moosewood Cookbooks.

I'm sure there is more.. can't think of any of the other ones I've got at the moment.

That's a very impressive collection - shame Caithness isn't closer ;)

good list!
Howsabout adding Boericke's Materia Medica? - nearly all of classical homoeopathy in one book!
-and a current copy of Reed's nautical almanac?

Martin,

I thought an intelligent lad like you would be too canny to put any faith in homeopathy

Nev

Do I hear a homeopathy debate in the midst

Strange one that is, so a pill that is so watered down that it only has the memory of the substances that are needed to treat an illness. I must admit I am on the fence about this one, with my feet dangling on the side of its a load of old rot.

The whole treatment for it is part of lengthy converations with the practitioner . They get to know all about you, this means that your stress levels must go down (I think). Stress is a long since suspected catlaix of many illnesses is there a link in the consultaions and the feeling of wellbeing rather than the pill and is this how it works. Probally.

what a great collection!

Might print that list out and look for them all.

Andy Hamilton wrote:Do I hear a homeopathy debate in the midst

'Bout time we had a decent argument here, though the book review section is an odd place for it!

I suppose in the end it's all about personal boat-floating, but it does seem odd that someone who shouts so loudly against 'snake-oil' in other sections should advocate this sort of snake oil.

The thing about 'alternative medicine' is that, so often, it naturally plays to the desparate, and you end up with people who actually want to be fleeced of their money, and who want to believe something is happening. It's an open door to crooks, fraudsters, liars and cheats. But I often wonder if I had something incurable, whether I would seek the attentions of an alternative practitioner of some sort - there seems no shortage of choice to whom I can open my wallet to.

But I have heard quite enough 'healers' talking about 'energy' and 'vibrations', 'cleasning' or 'detoxifying', and no end of other empty words. Words that make it sound scientific, but actually have no meaning. I once heard a so-called colour therapist (who was, rather predicatably I thought, dressed just like an archetypal wizard), talking about what was meant to be happening as his patient sat in front of impressive whirling wheels and flashing coloured lights. He said this was bringing about an 'imperceptable chemical change, so small that it can't be measured scientifically'. That is to say, he was describing it in scientific terms (a chemical change), but also saying that it was somehow unmeasureable by science. What he didn't seem to realise was that if there is no way of detecting this chemical change, then to all intents and purposes, it hasn't happened - if the chemical change does something, then it is detectable. To say that it is not detectable means that it has not done anything. And remember that, basically, all science can do is measure things.

There is no real scientific support for homeopathy (pseudo-science abounds, though), and when you hear things like the fact that the remedy needs vigorously shaking during its preparation, and only by human hands, or it won't work, and when you hear people talking about a 'memory' of the substance, then the whole credence of the thing falls apart.

But the real charlatan, in my books, was that bloke Bach (he of the flower remedies, not any of the composers). This is the chap who could, he claimed, think himself into a certain condition, and would then go wandering about in the undergrowth until he felt better. Whatever plant he was next to at the time was the cure. Preposterous!

I think Andy has it about right in saying that it's not really the remedy that does the work. I reckon it's possible that we underestimate our ability to cure ourselves, and that if we contrive to make the conditions right, we can often do just that (and if we can't, we can feel better as we fail). And yet we often seem to delegate this responsibility to doctors, or health carers. But even in conventional medicine, it is often not the doctor who cures us - he just enables our bodies to get better. It is us who repair our own broken bones, the doctors just help set up the right conditions. Even in major surgery, they may be just removing something that is hampering our health, but then we have to do the repair work after that. Drugs may help things, but it's our bodies that have to do the getting better.

BTW, Andy, I really like the word 'catlaix'. Doesn't appear in any of my dictionaries, so I reckon we ought to think of a definition for it, and try and pass it into general useage.

Hmmm, Interesting response guys!

I expected a yelling! But yes, the placebo effect is a wonderful thing!

On the subject of pseudoscience I once knew a man who used a pendulum and old medical books to diagnose illness. It seems his Brother in law (I think) had a mystery illness that science couldn't identify. So this guy had a go at it and found out the poor unfornunate was being poisoned by mercury crystals (?) in his watch. I was fascinated at this stage so I asked the obvious question - did they get him tested for mercury? The answer came back yes they did but didn't find a trace. He was amazed that someone could be poisoned by levels of mercury that were undetectable!

Hmmm, yes got a bit off track here.......sorry!

Nev

'catlaix' - (pronounced cat-lay-ix) - the name given to the action performed by a French cat when lying down and cleaning itself by licking it's fur. The laix being a combination of lay and licks.

I have often wondered about our drinking water, when you think how many times over the centuries it has been through the sanitation process and replaced into the water cycle we should never be ill (or never be well depending on your point of view!) using the 'memory' arguement. All of us on medication that is 'excreted' should leave a memory on that water that is then added to the billions of litres of other water. I'm not talking about the eostrogen levels affecting fish, as they are measurable quantities but this vague idea of a memory I'm not convinced. I like to 'see' its effects in ways that are observable and measurable, so I'm afraid I just don't buy it, unless the placebo effect is in action which is a different kettle of fish.

kind thoughts
Deb

The UK National Health Service statement on homeopathy includes the following:

* Around 200 randomised controlled trials evaluating homeopathy have been conducted, and there are also several reviews of these trials. Despite the available research, it has proven difficult to produce clear clinical evidence that homeopathy works. Many studies suggest that any effectiveness that homeopathy may have is due to the placebo effect, where the act of receiving treatment is more effective than the treatment itself.
* Medical doctors and scientists do not generally accept homeopathy because its claims have not been verified to the standards of modern medicine and scientific method. Scientists argue that homeopathy cannot work because the remedies used are so highly diluted that in many there can be none of the active substance remaining.
* Supporters of homeopathy counter the scientific arguments with claims for a high success rates in babies, infants, and animals. Others argue that much of the research conducted into the effectiveness of homeopathy is not representative of routine homeopathic practice and that homeopathic treatment cannot be properly tested through standard clinical means.

...and yet they continue to fund it; all homoeopathic remedies continue to be presribable on the NHS.

There's a big debate still going on in my profession, and it doesn't look like it's going to stop any time soon. There is some research about a sort of "enhanced placebo effect" to account for the fact that some very tiny studies pick up statistically significant results, but they disappear with bigger populations.

Personally I think we've missed something in our science. I think there's an interaction between healer and patient that accounts for the action of homoeopathy, but the value of the actual remedy is nil apart from signifying a psychological acceptance of the exchange - sort of like the red and (blue) capsules in the Matrix.

And in case anyone wants to trot out the "snowflake argument" again, there's some good scientific data on why every snowflake is different. Sorry!