The book consists of 13 essays, each looking at some aspect of this difficult medical problem. Each essay ends with a lengthy bibliography, for those who want to dig further in a medical library. This view is presented forcefully by a doctor from Stanford University, but the remainder of the book shows that this view is out of date. Real progress has been made in defining the condition and understanding some of its origins. The key problem is that there are many symptoms and probably several causes that interact with each other.
Physicians are most at ease when one kind of germ causes one kind of disease.
The victim feels betrayed, alienated, desperately alone, and helpless. Now there is a small but expanding group of physicians who are willing to treat patients with multiple chemical sensitivity. Unfortunately, those medical groups that do not try to help victims of MCS react far more strongly against physicians who do try than they would against nonphysicians trying alternative health care approaches. There is a strong split in the medical community over this condition. Both groups of doctors have gone through the same medical schools and often they have gone through the same specialty training programs.