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It is always a pleasure to report on something new in the (English-speaking) world of neural therapy. This month I want to briefly review a recently published book: "Beyond pills, knives and needles" by Charles Crosby DO, the inventor of the Tenscam. First, full disclosure: Dr Crosby is a personal friend and I have written the Foreword to this book. I have no financial interest in it but I have for many years been intensely interested in the Tenscam device, its application to neural therapy and the science that lies behind it. The book is divided into two parts. The first is a survey of the science that underpins the energetic understanding of human health and disease. The second is practical applications of the Tenscam device. The first half is the important one, from the point of view of those practicing neural therapy. The most valuable contribution of this book to the world of neural therapy is a new definition of the term "interference field". The term interference field, as coined by the Huneke brothers is a clinical definition ‐ a focus somewhere in the body causing local or distant dysfunction, that responds to local injections of procaine. Because procaine was involved from the beginning in the discovery of interference fields, and because it is a sodium channel blocker, interference fields have been seen (up to now) only in electrophysiological terms. Simply put, interference fields are local disturbances of the body's electrophysiology. This definition has served us well. It provides physiological and anatomic explanations for our treatments. It also helps us understand the limitations of neural therapy and forces us to explore other aspects of physiology that make neural therapy more effective. (See "generalized cell membrane instability" Sept. 2007). However in recent years, the concept of "energetics" has been appearing more and more in the marketplace of ideas. Energetics has always been an explicit part of Eastern and shamanistic medicine, but in Western medicine its presence has been mostly "under the surface". Only with the advent of quantum physics has it become respectable to speak about non-local effects, resonances, intentionality and so forth. Experimental and clinical evidence is demonstrating that the body has a field of energy encompassing it and disturbances of this field are associated with detrimental effects on the health of the body. Dr Crosby takes the bold step of referring to these "disturbances or areas of anticoherence" as "interference fields". How well this definition correlates with the classical (electrophysiological) one is not discussed in this book, but my personal experience would say that the correlation is reasonably close. I suspect that there are exceptions, but I will leave that discussion for another day. Dr Crosby also introduces some other concepts that affect the body's energy field, for good and for bad. His descriptions of the Schuman resonance, crystals and scalar energy are particularly clear and concise. In my opinion the book is worth reading for these alone. Another new idea is Dr Crosby's personal method of detecting interference fields energetically. Using ideas from Jean Pierre Barral, (the guru of visceral manipulation), his hands scan the patient's energy field at a distance of 18 to 24 inches from the body, looking for "troughs" or "spikes" in the field. This is a quick and easy way to scan for the bigger interference fields, but does not (in my opinion) have the precision needed to localize very small interference fields, as in teeth, or in a part of a tooth. Fortunately, he also describes autonomic response testing and other methods which can complement this scanning method. The second half of the book describes the wide variety of disorders that can be treated energetically, and specifically with the Tenscam. Little of this will be surprising to experienced neural therapists, but nevertheless I found pearls here and there. Dr. Crosby fearlessly treats fibromyalgia, cardiac valvular dysfunction, and hernias, conditions not usually considered amenable to neural therapy. He also treats problems due to unresolved emotional conflicts by applying Tenscam energy to an area a few inches superior-posterior of the right ear. Little is provided to explain the rationale for this last treatment, but given the lack of risk it would seem reasonable to try this in appropriate patients. This readable little book can be ordered by email at mailto:orders@bookmasters.com or by telephone (in the US) at (800)247-6553 or (outside the US) at (419)281-1802 Ext 2402. Sincerely, Robert F. Kidd, MD, CM |