Third Line Medicine

Modern Treatment for Persistent Symptoms

Melvyn R. Werbach, M.D.
Assistant Clinical Professor
UCLA School of Medicine

A Penguin book
215 pages, 5" x 7 3/4"
soft cover, © 1986
ISBN 0-14-10-63-5

$ 10.95

Available from Third Line Press, Inc.

Modern medicine is in crisis. Medical care is becoming more and more expensive, reaching levels of cost which few people - and few governments - can afford. At the same time, despite a continuing onslaught of spectacular medical advances, there are signs that more money alone will not solve growing problems which threaten to erase the benefits of these advances.

Our current system of splitting medical care into many specialties has enabled practicing physicians to become competent in the numerous complex, sophisticated procedures which have been developed for each specialty, but we have paid for it by depending too much upon doctors who understand people only insofar as their illness fits into their particular area of expertise.

Those who don't fit are denied adequate treatment and frequently are given a psychiatric label even though psychiatry may have nothing to offer them. The result is that they either give up hope of improvement or seek help outside of scientific medicine.

If we label primary care as First Line Medicine, and specialty care Second Line Medicine, a proposed solution is Third Line Medicine, medical care devoted to patients who have failed to benefit from First and Second Line Medicine. Third Line Medicine uses a multi-causal Hippocratic model, much as First Line Medicine does, but applies it to the special needs of third line patients - patients who have failed to benefit from first and second line physicians. It deals with the psychological, not merely the psychiatric, influences on illness and incorporates both well-validated and controversial but safe procedures in its diagnostic and therapeutic armamentarium.

  • Third Line Medicine examines the roots of the current crisis and proposes a solution. It notes that current medical practice can be divided into two lines of care: First Line Medicine for basic care, and Second Line Medicine for sophisticated specialty care. The solution it proposes is Third Line Medicine - a new specialty devoted to treating people after the resources of all appropriate second line physicians have been exhausted.

  • Third Line Medicine explains why the crisis in medicine has developed, and how third line physicians can rectify many of the problems which provoked it. Most importantly, it offers new hope to the chronically ill by describing how the third line of medical care can succeed when first and second line treatments have failed.

    An insightful discussion of the roots of the modern health care dilemma - and a suggestion for the first step toward solving it.

  • From the foreword
    "Many, perhaps most, physicians live by a creed of commitment to the welfare of their patients. There is, as well, a small subgroup whose members are more suited to teaching and research. . . . There is, fortunately, still another breed of healer. Here and there concerned, or sensitive, or intuitive physicians awaken to special circumstances of their patients. They become challenged by incongruous symptoms, by modestly strange and unidentifiable ailments, by uncommon medical events. . . . This third kind of healer is the Third Line Physician. . . .

    It is a time for Third Line Medicine. . . . Rethinking medicine is a modern imperative, and while nearly everyone recognizes the need, few can respond. . . . You will note that Dr. Werbach critiques primarily the scientific fallacies of traditional medicine and the rigidity and the narrowness they foster and he uses the precise data and argument of science itself. . . . He also describes a host of rarely investigated causative factors of illness and unwellness. . . .

    This book probes why many traditions of medical practice need to be examined. Moreover, it suggests how to use this new understanding to produce a more humane, more caring and more therapeutically effective professional community, a community of professional healers especially equipped to heal those unwell with needs for a broader and more individually relevant therapeutic base than First or Second Line Medicine can provide. . . ."

    Barbara B. Brown, Ph.D.
    Author, New Mind: New Body and Between Health and Illness

  • Accolades for Third Line Medicine
    "For this clear exposition of what has happened and where we are going, all doctors . . . ought to be grateful."

    Abram Hoffer, M.D., Ph.D., Editor-in-Chief
    Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine (Canada)

    "Despite escalating health costs and decreasing public trust, there is light on the horizon for American medicine and for the countless patients who have been told that "nothing can be done." In a compassionate and concise manner, Doctor Werbach traces the emergence of Third Line Medicine, an integrated approach to health care that utilizes the best that orthodox medicine and alternative healing traditions have to offer. This book is an inspiration to all health care providers and their patients who believe that there is always hope for healing."

    David E. Bresler, Ph.D., Author
    Free Yourself from Pain
    former Director, UCLA Pain Control Unit

    "Third Line Medicine represents a contribution to the practice of medicine and confirms the old adage that the psychosomatic approach is much larger than psychiatry."

    Robert O. Pasnau, M.D., Professor of Psychiatry, UCLA
    former President, American Psychiatric Association

    "Third Line Medicine is a valuable contribution to our understanding of contemporary health issues. Melvyn Werbach, who pioneered in the psychiatric use of biofeedback and other innovations, brings to this topic a wealth of experience."

    Marilyn Ferguson
    Author, The Aquarian Conspiracy
    Publisher, The Brain/Mind Bulletin

    "This is a balanced and sensible book written by a practicing physician with much experience of treating patients who have not been helped by the conventional medical system. Dr. Werbach rightly criticises the simplistic view of modern medicine which looks at the single causes of diseases, where as in reality illness is the outworking of a number of dynamic and variable causes all inter-acting with each other. Doctors and patients alike who ignore its message do so at their peril."

    Julian N. Kenyon, M.D., M.B., Ch.B
    Author, Twenty First Century Medicine
    Director, The Centre for the Study of Alternative Therapies (UK)

    "Melvyn Werbach goes beyond the frontier of traditional Western medicine to offer intelligent options to those whose needs transcend ordinary medical treatment. This is a superb book. I highly recommend it!"

    Marilee Zdenek
    Author, The Right-Brain Experience and
    Inventing the Future

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