Living Proof: A Medical Mutiny »

Michael Gearin-Tosh is a fellow of St. Catherine's College, Oxford University, where he teaches English literature, and a visiting professor in the overseas department of Stanford University.

I was told I had cancer and that I must expect to die soon. Almost eight years later I still do my job and enjoy life. I have not had conventional treatment. Did my cancer simply disappear? Did I do nothing? Far from it. A number of things happened, some by accident, most by design.

Michael Gearin-Tosh is diagnosed with cancer at the age of fifty-four. The doctors urge immediate treatment. He refuses. Intuitively, not on the basis of reason. But as the days pass, Gearin-Tosh falls back on his habits as a scholar of literature. He begins to probe the experts' words and the meaning behind medical phrases. He tries to relate what each doctor says -- and does not say -- to the doctor's own temperament. And the more questions he asks, the more adamant his refusal to be hurried to treatment.

The delay is a high-risk gamble. He listens to much advice, especially that of three women friends, each with a different point of view, one a doctor. They challenge him. They challenge medical advice. They challenge one another. On no occasion do they speak with one voice. He also turns to unexpected guides within his own memory and in the authors he loves, from Shakespeare and Chekhov to Jean Renoir, Arthur Miller, and Václav Havel.

In the end, he chooses not to have chemotherapy but to combat his cancer largely through nutrition, vitamin supplements, an ancient Chinese breathing exercise with imaginative visualizations, and acupuncture.

No how-to book or prescriptive health guide, Living Proof is a celebration of human existence and friendship, a story of how a man steers through conflicting advice, between depression and seemingly inescapable rationalism, between the medicine he rejects and the doctors he honors.

Clear-eyed and unflinching, Gearin-Tosh even includes his own medical history, "The Case of the .005% Survivor"; explores general questions about cancer; and examines the role of individual temperament on medical attitudes, the choice of treatments, and, of course, survival.

Publishers Weekly

Gearin-Tosh, a tutor at St. Catherine's College, Oxford, was diagnosed with myeloma (cancer of the bone marrow) and told that if he did not begin chemotherapy immediately, he would be dead in less than a year. The recommended treatment, while probably extending his life somewhat, would not cure the condition. A second specialist confirmed the original prognosis, but the author rejected the proposed treatment after a former Oxford pupil consulted a cancer statistician who warned, "If your friend touches chemotherapy, he's a goner." Interwoven with engaging anecdotes from his professional life, Gearin-Tosh details his research into the world of alternative medicine, a journey that led him to Chinese breathing exercises and acupuncture. The treatment that he credits with saving his life he found in A Cancer Therapy, by Max Gerson, a doctor who died in 1958. Based on the daily drinking of freshly made juices and taking several coffee enemas a day, the Gerson Diet also includes a variety of supplements. Despite the time-consuming nature of this restrictive regime, eight years later Gearin-Tosh is alive and pursuing an active professional life. He is careful to point out that while this program is working for him, "each person should explore his own way with their physician." Gearin-Tosh's detailed, engaging memoir of a search for his own cure will inspire readers to take the time to consider their own treatments. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.