Summary:

Witty Ticcy Ray tells the story of Dr. Sacks’s treatment of a 24-year-old man with disabling Tourette’s syndrome. The first half of the essay is mainly medical-historical, with some technical language. When Sacks first tries treating Ray with a minute dose of Haldol, Ray finds that even that low dose too effective. It breaks up the rhythms that have determined his life since the age of 4, and he doesn’t like it. Later, a second trial using the same dose succeeds, Sacks believes, because Ray had by that time accommodated mentally to a change in self-image.

Still, over time Ray missed his old wildness and speed, and he and Sacks agree on a compromise: During the week, Ray takes Haldol and is the "sober citizen, the calm deliberator." On weekends, he is again "’witty ticcy Ray,’ frenetic, frivolous, inspired"--and a talented jazz drummer. This, according to Ray, offers Touretters an acceptable artificial version of normals’ balance between freedom and constraint.

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Although the setting is startlingly different, and the care provided is through highly unorthodox means, the healer in this science fiction story experiences in remarkably similar ways the everyday wear and tear of modern medical practice. Snake, a young female itinerant healer, has been asked to save the life of a young boy. Her attempts to do so, and her interactions with the boy, his family and community, and the tools of her trade (the snakes-mist, sand and grass) are detailed in the story. "Professional development" issues that this strong and complex character has to deal with include truth-telling, interfering and ignorant family members, self-sacrifice, and possible reprobation by her peers and teachers.

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In March, 1981, in Vermont, Charlotte Bedford goes into labor. She has decided to give birth at home with the help of a midwife, Sybil Danforth, but complications develop. Charlotte has a seizure, her heart stops, and she does not respond to CPR. The fetus is still alive, so Sybil delivers him successfully by Cesarean section, with a kitchen knife. But the bleeding when Sybil makes the incision convinces her assistant that the patient’s heart was still beating. She reports this to the police and Sybil is put on trial for involuntary manslaughter.

The story of the trial is told by Sybil’s daughter, Connie, fourteen years old at the time and now an obstetrician-gynecologist. The acquittal comes at a price: the midwife finds herself no longer capable of delivering babies, and both she and her daughter are given a new insight into the uncertainty which underlies so many of medical decisions. At the end of the novel we are left uncertain whether or not Charlotte was still alive when her baby was delivered.

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Julia’s sister, Kara, has a recurrence of leukemia, and, because of the horrors of chemotherapy along with a dismal prognosis, decides to forgo treatment. Kara asks Julia, along with two of her closest friends, to participate in a "sweat," an Indian purification ceremony intended to "recenter" one’s spirit prior to death. The idea of her sister dying has caught Julia off guard, despite Kara’s dismal prognosis, her baldness, her gray color in the mirror.

Kara lives life to the fullest, without fear; in sharing her life, Julia had forgotten about the reality of death. Julia is surprised when in only five days the ceremony takes place, and thinks of all the practical reasons this ceremony makes no sense. Against her will, Julia takes her sister to the sweat tent and participates in the ceremony. Even though it might have hastened her sister’s death, Julia comes to realize the importance of the ritual, for as her sister dies, she, herself, feels closer to her than ever before, and is finally able to see how Kara’s life had fit into a larger design.

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A doctor has become fascinated by mesmerism. He is curious to see what would happen to an individual put under hypnosis while dying. Would it stave off death? Would dying make hypnosis impossible? A friend agrees to be the subject of this experiment.

Seven months later, the doctor is called to the dying man’s bedside. As the patient’s breath and heartbeat slow, the doctor successfully hypnotizes him. The dying man feels no pain and responds to questions without rising from his trance. He asks the doctor not to wake him, but to let him die without pain. The next day, the patient’s eyes roll upward, his cheeks lose their color, and his mouth falls open. The man is apparently dead.

As they prepare him for burial, however, the tongue begins to vibrate and a minute later, answers the question the doctor put to the patient just before his death. "Yes; - no; - I have been sleeping - and now - now - I am dead," says the corpse. The amazed doctors leave the patient in exactly the same state for seven months. Finally, they resolve to wake him. As he begins to wake, the doctor asks what the patient’s wishes are. The dead man cries out that he is dead and must be awakened. The doctor wakes him and the corpse immediately falls apart into "a nearly liquid mass of loathsome - of detestable putridity."

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The novel is set in a small, Southern town. Velma Henry, a long-time civil rights activist and feminist, sits in a hospital gown on a stool listening to the musical voice of Minnie Ransom. Old Minnie is a healer; she heals people by contacting the points of physical or psychical pain in her patients and relieving them. She is helped by her spirit guide, Old Wife. Scars heal and wounds close in minutes under her touch.

Velma needs her help because she has just tried to kill herself, sick of the painful fight for change that never comes. Her healing takes a long time, for Minnie must first convince her that she wants to be cured. The two are surrounded by tourists, doctors, and passers-by. They are in a clinic that focuses on traditional medicines of all kinds. The novel describes the inner-healing process of Velma, the efforts of Minnie and the thoughts of people looking on or associated with the scene.

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Meridian is set in the American South during the 1960s and early '70s. The heroine, Meridian, is a black woman from a southern town. She marries, has a child, gets a divorce, sends her child away, and ends up working in a voters' registration campaign, encouraging African-Americans to register. Meridian is different from her co-workers in that she interacts with people as individuals, rather than by stereotyping them. For example, while others lecture black families about the importance of voting, Meridian sits and talks with them, trying to address their basic needs of food, heat, and affection.

As years pass, her co-workers quit and move into comfortable houses. She moves deeper south, living in whatever housing the community can afford to give in exchange for her constant work on their behalf. Frequently, after staging a rally or other event, Meridian develops partial paralysis. She grows more and more ill. A halo-like light surrounds her head as she thinks of the history of her people and of her role in that history. She ultimately heals herself and moves to the next small town.

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This is the story of Shed, a boy growing up in Idaho at the turn of the century. Shed, who believes he has a Native-American mother, is berdache, the Native-American third sex. Though physically male, he has feminine attributes and is bisexual. For the first half of the novel, Shed is trying to figure out who he is. He lives in a whore house run by Ida Richilieu, a bossy but deeply caring woman who acts as his mother. His own mother disappeared, hunting down a man who raped Shed. Shed later finds her body in the mountains.

One day he leaves Ida's place to visit his mother's people. On the way, he meets Dellwood Barker, a white man, who talks to the moon. Shed discovers a photograph of his mother in Dellwood's things and assumes that Dellwood is his father. Nevertheless, they fall in love and begin a sexual relationship. Dellwood believes in Moves Moves, the substance in sperm that gives life. The two separate so that Shed can go to the Indian reservation. He gets shot while there, but an old Indian man saves his life by breathing his soul into him.

Shed returns to Ida's where Ida, Shed, Dellwood (who stumbles back into Shed's life), and a whore named Alma Hatch, form a new family. Together they fight the racism and bigotry of the Mormons who take over the town. Ida and Alma get lost in a snow storm. Alma dies and Shed and Dellwood have to amputate Ida's legs which are badly frostbitten. They help her to heal by giving her the energy of their Moves Moves. By the end of the novel, Shed is content with his identity.

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Summary:

This densely packed book follows Oschman's Energy Medicine: The Scientific Basis (2000, see annotation) with applications to medical treatment and--very briefly--human performance (athletics, dance, music). Oschman, a cell biologist, shows how electroencephalograms, electrocardiograms, and pulsing electromagnetic fields (which can heal broken bones) are accepted medical technologies, while theoretically related Healing Touch, Therapeutic Touch, Qi Gong, Reiki, Reflexology, massage, etc. are widely used and effective but generally (and inaccurately) considered to be alternative medicine.

According to Oschman, contributions from quantum physics explain that the energies of the body are subtle, instantaneous, and highly efficient in regulation and healing at the cellular level. The body is best understood as a living crystal, which can semiconduct energy, translate physical energy (such as touch) to piezoelectricity, and maintain coherence and continuity. Given our evolutionary heritage, we can sense from healers their intention, empathy, and healing energy. Our bodies heal themselves with energy provided by both standard and nonstandard medicine.

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An automobile accident left Mary Swander nearly paralyzed and coping with chronic pain. After several incorrect diagnoses, she saw a neurosurgeon who told her that a disk in her neck ruptured "at C6 and punched a hole in the spinal cord. The flu virus went into the cord and infected it." She had central cord syndrome (which can paralyze arms) and myelitis (which can paralyze legs).

Other than traction, the doctors said they could not do anything more for her. She went to New Mexico where herbal medicines of a curandera and spiritual healing by a Russian Orthodox monk helped her. She now walks without a cane.

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