The Ecology of Care: Medicine, Agriculture, Money, and the Quiet Power of Human and Microbial Communities - Kindle edition by Didi Pershouse, Peter Donovan. Professional & Technical Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.
What can Cuban doctors, innovative ranchers in Saskatchewan, and the microbiome teach us about how to care for people and the Earth at the same time?
In this richly layered book, Didi Pershouse takes us on a fast-moving, sharp-witted journey through her own life: from growing up with the neurosurgeon who accidentally discovered the seat of memory in the brain, to working in a smoke-filled office at New York magazine, to her career as an innovative acupuncturist in Vermont, and on to a passion for close-knit communities, grazing cows, and soil restoration as solutions to much of what ails us.
Along the way, she unfolds a surprising new take on the story of our time: how the germ theory of disease joined with a profit-based economy, and unwittingly led to a “sterilization” of medicine, agriculture, and even our social lives. This 150-year detour has brought about the near destruction of our climate as well as a great forgetting of the power of connection.
By documenting a scientific understanding of the intelligence of the whole, Pershouse nudges us awake with a hopeful view and shows us how to reclaim the rich, “fertile” lives we are meant for.
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4.9 out of 5 stars 38 customer reviews
Length: 318 pages Word Wise: Enabled Enhanced Typesetting:Enabled
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Product details
File Size: 7240 KB
Print Length: 318 pages
Publication Date: April 8, 2017
38 customer reviews
4.9 out of 5 stars
4.9 out of 5 stars
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Showing 1-8 of 38 reviews
Top Reviews
Adam D. Sacks
5.0 out of 5 starsAn elixir for the modern ills of body, mind and spirit . . .February 5, 2016
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Didi Pershouse is a healer living and practicing in a cozy small community in rural Vermont, surrounded by the natural world and its eloquent teachings. She uses acupuncture, herbs, the aromas from the kitchen in her home/office, the community at large, the biodiverse landscape around her - and perhaps most importantly her warm listening ear - as her trove of therapeutic modalities.
Reading The Ecology of Care is like sitting in Didi's living room having a chat and a cup of tea. Her friendly, articulate and flowing writing style invites you into her panoramic overview of our health dilemmas, personal and planetary. She addresses painful subjects gently and compassionately and offers long-forgotten alternatives that are as old as the human race. She takes on the daunting task of connecting all the pieces in our fractured modern puzzle to emerge with an ecology of health that connects our frontal lobes to our gut microbes to the air we breathe, the food we eat and the places we walk. Then she travels the dots to global warming, soils, and regenerating our life-support systems. Everything is truly, literally, connected to everything else. Our health is no different.
As she says about hunter-gatherer healing, "It's not the list of plants that one needs, nor even the list of illnesses that each plant treats - it's the living, ongoing relationships between the practitioner, the herbs, the patient, and the landscape that form a whole system of indigenous health care." Didi has woven a story of how we can re-connect to our ancient ways of health, including the health of Mother Earth.
FULL DISCLOSURE: I have the good fortune of knowing Didi personally as a colleague in restoring ecosystems, and as a trained naturopathic physician I deeply appreciate her essential community healing perspective that is so often missing in the offices of medical "professionals" - including alternative practitioners who would like to do better but don't quite know how. The Ecology of Care is a thoughtful and heartfelt roadmap for our perilous times.
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Carol Song
5.0 out of 5 starsHow to walk the earth.July 27, 2016
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So many superlatives come to mind that it is hard to settle my mind enough, to a place where it is plausible. Make no mistake. Didi saves lives and her work is non-stop and her heart is the size of Kansas. A recipe for the evolution of our way of living is absolutely necessary for us all. For those who live in cities and suburbs, it may be hard to imagine her clinic. Sitting in a comfortable chair and having acupuncture, her little doggie in your lap, and fresh vegetables from her garden when you leave is healing on so many levels. She took my hand and held me in her arms when I wept after getting a terrible cancer diagnosis. Western medicine gave me a 10% chance. Didi helped me find a 100% chance. To care about dirt, air, hearts, food sources and spirit is the walk I have chosen. This book is a wonderful how to and a whole lot of why. I would love to see this book go into every medical school in the world. Thank you Didi, for your hard work and care for so many people, and for sharing your wisdom for all to read.
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Timothy ODell
5.0 out of 5 starsthe prose is nicely poetic at turns - worth looking forMarch 10, 2016
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Draws on a practitioner and citizen scientist's life experience and work to provide an integrated vision of health care, food, agriculture and climate - what they are and what they could be. If you do not yet see how all of these matters intersect, this is for you. And oh, the prose is nicely poetic at turns - worth looking for. This could become to human and environmental health what "A Sand County Almanac" is to environmentalism. Remember what Luther started with "95 Theses?" Read and consider. Carefully documented, like a scholarly publication, yet written for a a popular readership. You'll like it.
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Michelle N
5.0 out of 5 starsAn Impactful Read!September 4, 2016
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I judge an impactful writer by my ability to retain what I read much after I have finished reading the last page. This book is so filled with knowledge, history, and an understanding of the whole picture, that it is constantly lingering in the background for me. Didi engages at first with her own personal story, one that so many of us can relate to when life isn't going so well. Then she weaves in her life discoveries, with factual history, and an insightful look at what we do on a daily basis, unexamined. A wholistic view of living on this planet. I have recommened it not only to my own accupucturist, but to others in the medical field as well. Kudos Didi, with a big thanks for walking the talk!
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Yoyo
5.0 out of 5 starsRead it and share it with as many as you can!March 15, 2016
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Pershouse's book is a timely look at health care in our country seen in comparison to the state of our world and the health of the earth as a whole. It is full of hopeful ideas that we must urgently move towards implementing to save ourselves as well as our environment--it is not to late, but we must take action. This is an important work, with eye opening tales and we will all be better for reading it.
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Swami Asokananda
5.0 out of 5 starsInsightful, devasting, and hopefulOctober 6, 2016
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Have your hi-lighter at hand! There are so many eye-opening gems in this book. From Ms. Pershouse’s stories about her grandfather’s specialty of performing lobotomies to her profound insight to how everything is connected (from the soil to bacteria in our intestinal tract), I found this book guiding me on a journey to see my life and world more clearly. Seeing clearly means recognizing the troubled state of affairs we find ourselves in, and then seeing a way out of this mess. Didi has done her homework very well, and leaves us with confidence that healing is within our hands.
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Monica Jenkins
5.0 out of 5 starswhat will our future look like and will we even like that futureMarch 29, 2016
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This is an important addition to the ongoing discussion on what to do about Climate Change, what will our future look like and will we even like that future. Pershouse provides an indepth view of what problems are facing our existing healthcare structure and rather than just leave us in the doom and gloom provides suggestions on possible ways to move forward beyond the problems. A great read and a book I will certainly read again... and possibly a few more times beyond that. Looking forward to more by this author! Have given several as gifts to local healthcare professionals and environmentalists.
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 starsTimely. easy to read information everyone needs to hear.February 7, 2016
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A must read for anyone that cares about their own health, the health of others and the health of the planet. Beautiful written..and effortless read. Buy an extra copy for your healthcare provider.
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