Where There Is No Doctor and Where There Is No Dentist: free to download
A shelf of medical references is out of reach for most households. Two of the most respected ones cost nothing to download.
- Filed
Whether the cause is a disaster that closes the roads, a long trip into remote country or simply living far from a town, there are times when medical help is hours or days away. Knowing how to recognize and handle common illnesses and injuries in the meantime is one of the more useful things a household can learn.
Two books have become the standard references for that situation. The better known is Where There Is No Doctor; its companion covers teeth, under the title Where There Is No Dentist. Both come from Hesperian Health Guides, a nonprofit health publisher. They were written for village health workers in poor countries, and they are used that way around the world in many languages. They have also found a large readership among campers, travelers and people preparing for emergencies.
Both can be read and downloaded free, chapter by chapter or as complete PDF files, from Hesperian’s English resources page. Printed copies are also sold, and buying one supports the publisher’s free distribution.
Where There Is No Doctor
The book grew out of David Werner’s work with a community health program in the mountains of western Mexico, and it was first written in Spanish around 1970 as Donde no hay doctor. The English edition followed later in the decade, and it has been revised many times since. A substantially updated edition appeared in 2022, with current guidance on antibiotics and other medicines, HIV, malaria and care in pregnancy.
It is written in plain language and illustrated with hundreds of simple line drawings, and it goes well beyond first aid. Among other things it covers:
- how to examine a sick person and recognize danger signs
- the correct use and dosing of common medicines, and when antibiotics help and when they do not
- giving injections, and the risks of doing so
- helping at a normal birth and recognizing a birth that needs urgent help
- home remedies and what they can and cannot do
- setting and splinting broken bones, including improvised casts
- nutrition, clean water and hygiene as the basis of health
Where There Is No Dentist
The companion volume, by Murray Dickson, does the same for teeth and gums, and it too has been revised over the years. Its chapters cover daily care of the teeth and teaching it to children, how to examine the mouth and diagnose problems, treating toothache, abscesses and gum disease, placing simple temporary fillings, giving a dental injection and removing a tooth safely, and oral health in people living with HIV.
Using them well
These books were written to be used by trained community health workers, often backed by a supervisor or a distant clinic. Reading them is an excellent way to learn what is serious and what can wait, and they are valuable in a home library. Procedures like injections and tooth extraction are another matter: they carry real risks and should not be attempted by someone who has only read about them, except in a true emergency with no help available.
Whenever emergency services can be reached, call them first. Keep the files on a phone and a laptop, and consider printing the chapters most relevant to your household, because a PDF is no use when the battery is flat.