How to Raise a Healthy Child in Spite of Your Doctor

Robert Mendelsohn, M.D.’s How to Raise a Healthy Child In Spite of Your Doctor is an enlightening, if old, book by a renowned pediatrician who left a top hospital post after becoming disgusted with the way modern medicine treats children. Dr. Mendelssohn led a research hospital in Chicago until he became so disgusted and disenchanted with medical practices that he wrote this book that every parent should read to understand why it’s so critical to not put blind faith in medicine. Some of the things I recall most vividly is how he challenged the escalating trend of tonsils and adenoids being taken out of young boys, only to find that truly, these surgeries were unnecessary and risky for the patients but were needed to fill quotas for medical residents’ requirements.

I learned from Dr. M that a fever is a natural, healthy way for the body to fight infection, and that fever should not be “fought” or drugged. He put my mind at ease with statistics reassuring me that an out-of-control fever is so rare as to be something I needn’t worry about. This book is a good start towards realizing that the doctor isn’t God: a good first step down a road to a mother becoming a healer in the home.

You won’t so much get alternative health advice as much as understand the medical paradigm’s limitations and abuses, which is helpful in a parent’s initial effort to break loose of modern pediatrics.