This book covers some of the most fascinating and challenging aspects of the human, body and mind, and the development of cancers. The author notes genetic predispositions as well as other, innumerable, factors, including nutrition, pollution (think of asbestos, tobacco...) and other environmental and life-style factors. That psychological and experiential factors can be (and perhaps usually are) involved in the development of cancers has been known for two millennia and more: in the 2nd century b.c. the famous Roman-Greek physician and surgeon, Galen of Pergamon, noted that 'melancholic women' tend to develop lumps in their breasts.
Cathie Grout devotes the larger part of the book to describe her own experiences in coping with and finally eliminating a non-Hodgins Lymphoma, and describes additonally many 'alternative', 'complementary (and dare one say 'fringe) systems of treatment in what seems to be about the most thorough survey of those fields yet printed. However, throughout her story - even on the first page - she notes a thread of something different: the power of the mind.
These topics have been investigated and reported in detail by the Belgian Surgeon and Psychotherapist, Thierry Janssen in one of his books: 'La Solution Interieure' (2006), now available in English as 'The Solution Lies Within: Towards a new medicine of body and mind' (Free Association Books, 2010), which tackles the same material from the viewpoint of a physician and scientist. Cathie Grout's personal experiences and her delightful balanced and non-doctrinaire style is an impressive presentation of or counterpoint to Janssen's concept of a new medicine of body and mind. Although she confines herself to one medical condition, what she did and what she has written would apply to - who knows? All illnesses? Probably. In summary, this is one of the most worth-while books asround for anyone.