Last week, I became obsessed with reports that Vladimir Putin is a believer in an unproven remedy that involves bathing in blood drained from the horns of Siberian red deer.
In addition to taking bloodbaths, some patients also down a glass.
Alas, the person I had the instinctive urge to call for perspective on this disturbing dispatch—Barrie R. Cassileth—was gone. Barrie, a repository of information on alternative medicine, died of complications from Alzheimer’s disease on Feb. 26 at age 83.
Before her disease struck, Barrie would have been able to walk me through all the practices of alternative medicine—their mythological, physiological, historical, and economic basis—more facts than one could be expected to absorb in a succinct 90-minute conversation.
