Anyone starting to get an interest in natural medicine should read this book before any other, the same goes for skeptics. Linus Pauling was a personality greater than life, so if you are one of those people who often don't know who to believe (I think we all go through that phase nowadays), then you will read this book with trust in your heart because of who he was, one of the greatest scientists of all times, the only person who ever won the Nobel Prize twice, on his own and in two different categories. And.... he lived to be 93 so his theories seem to have worked (not that I always think that people who believe in some kind of treatment should have it work for them to prove it).
Pauling talks about a problem which is about to get far worse, the fact that the RDA for most of the vitamins and minerals are far too low. What would he have thought if he knew that now, in 2011, most of them are going to be reviewed on the down..... And this is not without consequences, the first one being that the supplements people take do nothing at all, second one the fact that knowing that, people might start taking more than the recommended dose not aware that they might be taking too much of other components in the supplement. Wouldn't it be far better to tell people the right amounts to take?
This book is mainly about the use of Vitamin C to help a lot of ailments like the common cold, heart problems, mental problems, illnesses of the eye, ear and mouth, cancer, allergies and many more. But he also talks about the toxicity of vitamins, compares vitamins and drugs and talks about their side effects. There is also reference to other vitamins and minerals. All in all a very balanced book. Right at the beginning there are a few repetitions but that can be forgiven as this is a really very important book. His writing style is pleasant although a bit technical in some sections (you have to take into account that it won't have been easy to come down to our level). There are a few things that puzzled me but then what would Linus Pauling write today if he had been alive? My version of the book dates from 1986 so some things were maybe viewed differently back then. He seemed to find corn syrup an acceptable sweetener, something I think is not really considered good anymore, he talks about lowering the cholesterol and cholesterol causing heart disease, something we know now is not that straight forward.
Linus Pauling was also a very interesting personality and I believe that it is not only important to read about his findings but also about him as a person.