Customer Reviews

Matrix & Matrix Regulation: Basis for a Holistic Theory in Medicine

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a long awaited english translation of the original German text. Pischinger has truely written a tour-de-force on systems based physiology. The books holistic philosophy stays in synch with much of German medical thought. It's an incredibly researched and thoughtful approach towards an alternative physiological paradigm. My only complaint is that the author covers too much ground without providing the necessary source material. Many areas are merely made reference to and washed over without supporting discussion, and given that most of the research is in untranslated German, verification and deeper technical review may be near impossible. However, it gives some major food for thought that isn't being taught in schools today and it's a must read for physicians, physiologists and medical researchers.

Matrix and Matrix Regulation is a book about connective tissue: histology, biochemistry, biophysics, and how it is clinically related to human health and disease. The book is based on extensive basic science and clinical research done by the author, Alfred Pischinger, and multitude of other European (largely German and Austrian) physicians and scientists in 1950's through 1980's. In other words, this is where European Medicine stood twenty years ago. Unfortunately, as of 2005, it remains a ground-breaking eye-opener for physicians in the United States.

The first part of the book (about 70 pages) is slow and boring at times as it describes histology, biochemistry, etc. Stay with it, it is worth your while - you will learn quite a few things that will make you respect connective tissue. It gets much better when the author begins to describe the clinical implications of his research.

Any physician involved with treatment of chronic conditions and pain and/or interested in alternative and complimentary medicine must read this book. One group of physicians may find it especially enlightening: if you practice acupuncture, this book gives you (or, at least, comes as close as possible to providing) a scientific explanation for acupuncture phenomenon. As I don't read German, it is impossible for me to check some of the important references given in the book, and I am not able to verify claims made by the author.

One drawback of the book is that the translation was not edited properly (if at all), and it shows: sentence structures are often awkward and sometimes hard to understand, but, again, it is still worth the effort to read and learn from this book.

Finally, it may be near impossible to find the book. If you, as I do, have access to an academic medical library, you can order this book via inter-library loan system (ILL) from National Library of Medicine.

Please note that the out of print Matrix and Matrix Regulation (1991) has been updated as The Extracellular Matrix and Ground Regulation (2007) with a translation by Ingeborg Eibl, DC. The newer text is very readable and very affordable as compared to the out of print text.

Rodney G. Jackson, DC