Where There Is No DoctorEdward Roy
Where There Is No Doctor
by Edward Roy · first published 2021
14mentions
7recommended by
13HN commenters
2012–2026first – last mentioned
54% recommend46% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Practical village health handbook that readers keep for emergencies and remote settings where medical help is far away. Often suggested as a starting point for basic health care knowledge. Free online as PDFs.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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The target audience is different, but this made me think of the book: Where There Is No Doctor: A Village Health Care Handbook It was discussed a little here over year ago at: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19431005 It can be purchased in book form, or the individual chapters can be downloaded…
on “Riot Medicine” ↗If our healthcare system cannot or does not wish to serve us, it is time to take responsibility for our own health. Good start: https://store.hesperian.org/prod/Where_There_Is_No_Doctor.ht...
on “New York's largest healthcare provider fires 1,400 unvaccinated workers” ↗…equipment (walkie-talkies), books that explain how to do stuff ([1], [2]), all kinds of tools, instruments and equipment. WARNING: all of the above is purely theoretical. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where_There_Is_No_Doctor [2] http://www.amazon.com/Where-Women-Have-No-Doctor/dp/09423642...
on “Trading Meat for Tires as Bartering Economy Grows in Greece” ↗…themselves in that situation there is a book called “where there is no dentist” that outlines most common procedures and tool use. It’s worth learning if you’re likely to be away from “civilization “. Also “where there is no doctor “ can be a lifesaver.
on “Indonesia's e-bike shops are building their own batteries” ↗…which is gold for civilian use in tough times. - Download every radio frequency list I can for my area of the country. - Download digital copies of The Encyclopedia of Country Living by Carla Emory, Where There Is No Doctor, and Where There Us No Dentist. I already have paper versions of almost all of these but it’s handy to have easily-reproducible and far more portable digital copies.
on “Ask HN: What would you preserve if the internet were to go down tomorrow?” ↗"Where There Is No Doctor" would be a good place to start. https://hesperian.org/
on “Reflections on AI at the End of 2025” ↗That's a very different problem than OP You should keep physical books, food, and medication for a SHTF scenario "Back to Basics", "Where There Is No Doctor" and the Bible are my SHTF books You won't be coding in a SHTF scenario.
on “Way AI assistance impacts the formation of coding skills” ↗It is telling that in one of the seminal works about accessibility and rural public health, "Where There Is No Doctor", by David Werner, roughly 10% of the book needs to be devoted to wound and general sanitation and exhortations to keep anything sanitation sensitive the hell away from dirt and nightsoil.
on “Project Nomad – Knowledge That Never Goes Offline” ↗…etc) 4. Firearm(s) 5. Wind-up fm/am/wx radio 6. My amateur HT 7. First aid kit (customized, and common needed meds added per the books in #8) 8. Resource Books (US Army Special Forces Medic manual, Where There Is No Doctor, the edible plants guide for my region). I own and I've of course already spent time studying these, so it's somewhat practiced and easier to perform under stress. 9. Sanity books. Something long and…
on “Ask HN: In an emergency what tools and technology would you take?” ↗…guess the main reason is that women were/are not empowered enough to decide how many kids they should have. Another major factor is lack of availability/knowledge of contraceptives. The Hesperian's "Where There Is No Doctor" [1] offered another explaination - in some parts of the world people are too poor to not have many children. A child needs few years to grow, and then it can work for the family. This makes children…
on “As crops rot, millions go hungry in India” ↗…they are making a difference inevitably solve the wrong problems and likely solve them badly. Now, my parents took some boarding school students to help build medical clinics (under the direction of "Where there Is No Doctor" author David Werner) in the mountains of Mexico back before I was born. They were providing unskilled labor in an area that really did have a shortage (because most people were working in the farms).…
on “Why I stopped being a voluntourist ” ↗1992 version: https://archive.org/details/Where_There_Is_No_Doctor_A_Villa... 2010 version: https://archive.org/details/WhereThereIsNoDoctor-English-Dav... Chapters from the latest (2021) version are available free from the publisher at https://hesperian.org/books-and-resources/.…
on “Where There Is No Doctor – David Werner (2013) [pdf]” ↗…something else than an RPi that could work with a GPT/LLM such as an NVidia Jetson (yes, I know, expensive) or a separate compute module? Do you store just things like Wikipedia or a bunch of PDFs such as "Where there is no doctor?" and "Wilderness Survival Guide?" along with other disaster recovery books? I missed this project the first couple of times it was posted so glad to see if pop up today.
on “Show HN: 5 Years Ago I made the Recovery Kit, I just made the RK2” ↗https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where_There_Is_No_Doctor And the dentist counterpart https://archive.org/details/Where_There_is_No_Dentist_Murray...
on “Show HN: Preppr – a modern prepping/survivalist iOS app” ↗