The Encyclopedia of Natural Healing might be able to show one how to live a healthy life, but if I had a sudden health problem I wouldn’t trust it any farther than I could throw it. Given that the book weighs eight pounds, that isn’t very far.

Zoltan Rona, MD, MSc, and Siegfried Gursche, MH (for Master Herbalist), are listed as the book’s authors. Filled with full-colour pictures and printed on glossy paper the 1,472-page tome is supposed to be “an easy-to-use, authoritative, self-help guide” that integrates “age-old evidence and documented health wisdom with the most up-to-date scientific information.”

The first 200 pages cover many aspects of healthy living and give unobjectionable advice, for the most part. There are chapters on choosing a healthy living space (with cleaning hints à la Heloise: remove silver tarnish by soaking in hot water in an aluminum pan), how the body works (with diagrams of the circulatory, respiratory, digestive, and you-name-it systems), and diet (eat lots of fresh, raw foods, go easy on the animal products, use whole grain flours). In short, advice you might find in any mildly unorthodox guide and which will probably improve your general health if you follow it.

But the book becomes harder to judge in the chapters on nutritional supplements, alternative healing methods, and in the nearly 1,000-page section on individual problems, “A to Z Conditions.” Unlike other alternative medicine references such as The Encyclopedia of Natural Medicine (Michael Murray and Joseph Pizzorno, Prima Publishing, 1991) there are no footnotes, no mention of research anywhere that might support the claims of the different therapies recommended. All are given equal weight, whether herbal, homeopathic, chiropractic, reflexological or whatever. No method is suggested to help you separate the wheat from the chaff. You have to decide what therapy looks best to you, or try your own experiments. Take, for example, the advice on what to do about cataracts. In addition to eye rinses and nutritional supplements, the book suggests: “Wear U.V. protective sunglasses – sun exposure accelerates cataract formation.

“Avoid overall stress.

“Use regular daily water stepping and cold affusions on the buttocks to help slow the formation of cataracts.”

As for emergencies, the book does mention consulting a traditional doctor in a handful of cases where life may be in danger such as appendicitis and poisoning (for the former the book says to call 911). But nowhere in the sections on headache or neck pains does the book mention the possibility of meningitis, nor does it list the signs of a life-threatening allergic reaction even though it does mention that such reactions are possible.

For years a tattered paperback edition of Dr. Benjamin Spock’s Baby and Child Care lived on my bedside table for quick consultation in the middle of the night when somebody woke up crying. It was responsible for our taking a very feverish baby to the hospital with what turned out to be meningitis, and I will be forever grateful for the advice that got us moving that winter night.

You couldn’t keep this book beside the bed. It’s too big, too heavy and that is perhaps a good thing. That way you won’t be tempted to experiment with lindenflower tea, hot compresses, or belladonna drops (all suggested for fever) in a case where other health guides would say you shouldn’t delay going for help.