Thomas Cowan was a 20-year-old Duke grad―bright, skeptical, and already disillusioned with industrial capitalism―when he joined the Peace Corps in the mid-1970s for a two-year tour in Swaziland. There, he encountered the work of Rudolf Steiner and Weston A. Price―two men whose ideas would fascinate and challenge him for decades to come.

Both drawn to the art of healing and repelled by the way medicine was―and continues to be―practiced in the United States, Cowan returned from Swaziland, went to medical school, and established a practice in New Hampshire and, later, San Francisco. For years, as he raised his three children, suffered the setback of divorce, and struggled with a heart condition, he remained intrigued by the work of Price and Steiner and, in particular, with Steiner’s provocative claim that the heart is not a pump. Determined to practice medicine in a way that promoted healing rather than compounded ailments, Cowan dedicated himself to understanding whether Steiner’s claim could possibly be true. And if Steiner was correct, what, then, is the heart? What is its true role in the human body?

In this deeply personal, rigorous, and riveting account, Dr. Cowan offers up a daring claim: Not only was Steiner correct that the heart is not a pump, but our understanding of heart disease―with its origins in the blood vessels―is completely wrong. And this gross misunderstanding, with its attendant medications and risky surgeries, is the reason heart disease remains the most common cause of death worldwide.

In Human Heart, Cosmic Heart, Dr. Thomas Cowan presents a new way of understanding the body’s most central organ. He offers a new look at what it means to be human and how we can best care for ourselves―and one another.

Why the War on Cancer Has Failed and What That Means for More Effective Prevention and Treatment A groundbreaking look at the role of water in living organisms that ultimately brings us closer to answering the riddle of the etiology of, and therapy and treatment for, cancer When President Nixon launched the War on Cancer with the signing of the National Cancer Act of 1971 and the allocation of billions of research dollars, it was amidst a flurry of promises that a cure was within reach. The research establishment was trumpeting the discovery of oncogenes, the genes that supposedly cause cancer. As soon as we identified them and treated cancer patients accordingly, cancer would become a thing of the past. Fifty years later it's clear that the War on Cancer has failed-despite what the cancer industry wants us to believe. New diagnoses have continued to climb; one in three people in the United States can now expect to battle cancer during their lifetime. For the majority of common cancers, the search for oncogenes has not changed the treatment: We're still treating with the same old triad of removing (surgery), burning out (radiation), or poisoning (chemotherapy). In Cancer and the New Biology of Water, Thomas Cowan, MD, argues that this failure was inevitable because the oncogene theory is incorrect-or at least incomplete-and based on a flawed concept of biology in which DNA controls our cellular function and therefore our health. Instead, Dr. Cowan tells us, the somatic mutations seen in cancer cells are the result of a cellular deterioration that has little to do with oncogenes, DNA, or even the nucleus. The root cause is metabolic dysfunction that deteriorates the structured water that forms the basis of cytoplasmic-and therefore, cellular-health. Despite mainstream medicine's failure to bring an end to suffering or deliver on its promises, it remains illegal for physicians to prescribe anything other than the "standard of care" for their cancer patients-no matter how dangerous and ineffective that standard may be-and despite the fact that gentler, more effective, and more promising treatments exist. While Dr. Cowan acknowledges that all of these treatments need more research, Cancer and the New Biology of Water is an impassioned plea from a long-time physician that these promising treatments merit our attention and research dollars and that patients have the right to information, options, and medical freedom in matters of their own life and death.

One doctor's surprising answer to the epidemic of chronic disease and essential reading for everyone concerned with the health of the next generation ..[T]he further we move away from nature the sicker we become, and it is our children who pay the heaviest price for what modern civilization is doing to our environment and our bodies. This book will make the reader think. I warmly recommend it! Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride, MD, author of Gut and Psychology Syndrome Over the past fifty years, rates of autoimmunity and chronic disease have exploded. While some attribute this rise to increased awareness and diagnosis, Thomas Cowan, MD, argues for a direct causal relationship to a corresponding increase in the number of vaccines children typically receive. Dr. Cowan looks at emerging evidence that certain childhood illnesses are actually protective of disease later in life; examines the role of fever, the gut and cellular fluid in immune health; argues that vaccination is an ineffective (and harmful) attempt to shortcut a complex immune response; and asserts that the medical establishment has engaged in an authoritarian argument that robs parents of informed consent. His ultimate question, from the point of view of a doctor who has decades of experience treating countless children is: What are we really doing to children when we vaccinate them? Dr. Cowan intelligently educates us on the complicated and beautiful workings of our immune system, clearly explains how and why its malfunction is harming us, and elucidates why our precious children are so vulnerable to these diseases. Lindy Woodard, MD, Pediatric Alternatives

Reflexology has become one of the most popular and accessible alternative health therapies. It is based on the ancient principle that each part of the body has a direct relationship to a point that is massaged on the foot. Reflexology can be used to revitalise energy, reduce stress, and to relax and heal the body. It can bring relief from common problems such as headaches, insomnia, kidney stones, high blood pressure, menstrual cramps and excess weight in a relaxing, comfortable and easy-to-learn way. Contains over 250 easy-to-follow drawings; Provides clear descriptions of the reflex points and basic techniques; Gives a reference list of common ailments and the reflexology techniques to relieve them; Includes special advice for those with stress, sports injuries, the elderly, couples, children, women and those with addiction problems; Offers a comprehensive guide to reflexology, and will be welcomed by everyone who would like to learn how to use their hands for healing

In urban and peri-urban areas across the Global South, politicians, planners and developers are engaged in a voracious scramble to refashion land for global real estate investment, and transfer state power to private sector actors. Much of this development has taken place on the outskirts of the traditional metropoles, in the territorially flexible urban frontier. At the forefront of these processes in India, is Gurgaon, a privately developed metropolis on the south-western hinterlands of New Delhi, that has long been touted as India's flagship neoliberal city. Subaltern Frontiers tells a story of India's remarkable urban transformation by examining the politics of land and labour that have shaped the city of Gurgaon. The book examines how the country's flagship post-liberalisation urban project has been shaped and filtered through agrarian and subaltern histories, logics, and subjects. In doing so, the book explores how the production of globalised property and labour in contemporary urban India is filtered through colonial instruments of land governance, living histories of uneven agrarian development, material geographies of labour migration, and the worldly aspirations of peasant-agriculturalists.

Through Fear to Faith tracks the author's faith journey from growing up years in a fundamentalist church, graduating from that church's college and seminary, and then making the painful decision to leave that church which had "saved" not only his drunken father, but their dysfunctional family as well. Since success rates for so called "geographical cures" aren't all that high, just becoming a Methodist minister didn't satisfy all his heart's needs. Finding a faith of his own - one that he could preach with integrity - took years of struggle; struggle that led him to therapists' offices and into Alcoholics' Anonymous meetings in church basements. Through Fear to Faith is, largely, a paean to the church - its music, its rituals, its traditions - and a promise that there is a faith to be found, if, with all our hearts, we truly seek it.