Book review

The Desktop Guide to Complementary andAlternative MedicineEditor Edzard Ernst & Associate Editors Max H. Pittler,

Clare Stevinson & Adrian White

Published by Mosby Edinburgh 2001.

454 pages, Price $34.95,.ISBN 07234 3207 4

If you, like me, have ever puzzled over the Feldenkrais

method, or wondered what is Qi gong then help is at

hand. What the authors have done here is to bring

together into a desk-top manual, with an accompanying

CD-ROM, an account of the commoner types of

complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) together

with their own and others work, derived from systematic

reviews, to examine its evidence base. By doing so they

have provided a quick, accessible, guide for the practising

clinician which should make it easier to discuss the issues

with individuals seeking their advice or help in spotting

when there might be, say, an interaction between a

prescribed medicine and something obtained from a

nonconventional source. With so many people resorting

to nonprescribed preparations, if nothing else, their table

of interactions between herbal remedies and anti-

coagulants is worth the price of the book. The section

on herbal remedies will provide a quick answer to many

of the commoner questions posed to pharmacologists and

pharmacists.

There are references throughout not only to the data

backing up their conclusions but also giving entry points

to references on most of the commoner forms of CAM.

Whether it would be possible to quickly access some of

these papers is debatable as a goodly number are in journals

not stocked by most conventional medical libraries.

What this book also does is to indicate where there is

acceptable evidence for CAM, other areas where there

remains doubt, and some where it can be rejected outright.

The authors are not alone in this approach but they have

made their conclusions readily accessible in the book and

provided a CD where this information can be referred

to rapidly. Plainly it is not possible to detail every modality

of CAM in a book of this sort but the authors have been

successful in producing a comprehensive and worthwhile

guide that can be recommended to all clinicians, and to

anybody else, who may want a readily accessible guide

to the pitfalls and benefits of using complementary

medicine – and medicines.

Brian KirbyEmeritus Professor of Medicine and Consultant Physician,

University of Exeter, Exeter

Correspondence: Professor Brian Kirby, Emeritus Professor of

Medicine and Consultant Physician, University of Exeter, Exeter.

E-mail: B.J.Kirby@exeter.ac.uk

f 2002 Blackwell Science Ltd Br J Clin Pharmacol, 54, 71 71