The Miracles of Water (and the 9 Natural Doctors) by Sandra Horner

This book explains the natural ways to maintaining good health, and how to treat illnesses. There are 31 chapters, split up into four major sections: The 9 Natural Doctors, Doctor Nutrition, Lifestyle Diseases, and only 9 chapters under the heading “Miracles of Water”, with even 2 of them not directly related to water. This makes me think that perhaps the book could be better titled, as the main emphasis is not on water.

As the author states in the “Acknowledgements” section, this book owes a lot of its material to the writings of Calvin and Agatha Thrash of Uchee Pines. This book actually distills some of the best material in their books down into an easily-carried, small book that makes it very useful. It is written particularly with the Indian/Nepali circumstances in mind, and the color pics are very attractive in illustrating points.

In talking about cancer, the book doesn’t cover what i think is one of the most common causes - which is too much sunshine. Having a brother who has gone under the knife twice for this kind of cancer, and having “pre-cancer” skin problems of my own, this is a serious omission, but again, in light of the intended audience in India, perhaps it is not such a problem among them.

The subjects are very comprehensive for such a small book, covering even the “hot” topics of spices and tea. So many people tell me “It’s our culture to use these things”, expecting me to agree that we should respect the culture we are in. I usually reply that we, as Seventh-day Adventist Christians, accept the good things in the culture, and reject the bad things. The culture here is to pray to idols, but we don’t do that, do we? Whenever the culture clashes with Jesus, we choose Jesus every time. If the culture uses spices and tea, reject that part of the culture, replacing those things with something God can approve of.

Having grown up following most everything in this book, there is little new information for me, except that i didn’t know ginger is considered an “irritating spice”, and didn’t know that large starch molecules can adversely affect the brain.. Ginger is not in the harmful category, and when i asked the author, was told that it can be used as medicine, but not to be used on a regular basis. I sure remember many cold nites in Japan when i put some ginger paste or cut up some pieces and put in with my udon noodle soup, and it warmed my whole body up from the insides it seemed. But maybe it was not so good to use, or maybe it is OK to warm up a body once in a while, i don’t know.

The sources given for the various vitamins and minerals do not seem to have been thoroughly investigated. For example, the sources given for Vitamin C are “Citrus fruit, cabbage, and potatoes”. Well, cabbage and potatoes are actually poor sources of Vitamin C. Guava, which is readily available in India, has almost 3 times as much Vitamin C as an orange (per 100g), and stir-fry green pepper has more than double that of oranges, and over 10 times the amount of Vitamin C as a potato! In the Vitamin A category, sweet potatoes are not even listed, yet are actually the highest source of Vitamin A among commonly available foods.