Symptoms of Unknown Origin: A Medical Odyssey

Dr. Meader uses case studies to consider how physicians can recognize and treat patients with symptoms hitherto deemed 'imaginary' or unconnected to disease. These case histories are bizarre and unique, but go a long way in illustrating how diagnoses can easily be wrong, and how the methods Dr. Meador developed to diagnose 'nonexistent' diseases can help physicians consider diagnosis more fully. Dr. Meader urges subsequent studies to test his observations, but the real meat here lies in case history examples which are eye-opening surveys of uncommon medical health and disease indicators. Diane C. Donovan California Bookwatch

This book is about thinking outside of the box when confronting human illness. It consists of a collection of very entertaining medical enigmas from Dr. Meador's career that serve as parables to illustrate the inadequacies of the prevailing "biomolecular" approach to understanding and treating illness. Although the biomolecular model of Dr. Meador's day has since been supplanted by the biopsychosocial model in academic circles, in actual clinical practice this transition has yet to occur. Instead of searching for root causes, we learn to blame our patients for their refractory illnesses by characterizing them as "problem patients", "difficult", or "noncompliant". Those labels are often true, but they don't encourage or help us to address the underlying problems. Dr. Meador's book does. Whether you're a dedicated "never-give-up" doctor who wants to help even your most trying patients, a frustrated clinician who is sick of losing battles with chronic disease day in and day out, or simply a perceptive soul who snickers at the thought of trying to reduce a whole patient into a set of ICD-9 codes, I think you will find this instructive and compassionate little book to be full of insights that will make it worth reading and re-reading on a regular basis.

I am proud to claim Cliff Meador as a friend and mentor throughout my medical career, and this book will show you why. It's funny, brilliant, and gets at the heart of the practice of medicine: the intimate, important interactions between doctor and patient, science and humanity, suffering and healing. More than anecdotal, this ought to be required reading for every medical student, and for anyone who's ever been a patient.