Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient. Reflections on Healing and Regeneration.

New York and London: W. W. Norton & Co., 1979. First edition, 5th printing.
SIGNED--BESTSELLING PERSONAL ACCOUNT OF DISEASE BY A PATIENT--FIRST PUBLISHED AS AN ARTICLE IN THE NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE.
14x21.5 cm hardcover, beige paper covered boards, maroon cloth spine with gilt title, inscribed on free front endpaper, "for Charles Manatt, Sincerely, Norman Cousins", 173 pp, near-fine in very good price-clipped jacket in protective mylar sleeve.
NORMAN COUSINS (1915 - 1990) was an American political journalist, author, professor, and world peace advocate. In the 1950s, Cousins played a prominent role in bringing the Hiroshima Maidens, (truncated) a group of twenty-five Hibakusha, to the United States for medical treatment. Cousins became an unofficial ambassador in the 1960s, and his facilitating communication between the Holy See, the Kremlin and the White House helped lead to the Soviet-American test ban treaty, for which he was thanked by President John F. Kennedy and Pope John XXIII, His proudest moment by his own reckoning, however, was when Albert Einstein called him to Princeton University to discuss issues of nuclear disarmament and world federalism. Cousins also served as Adjunct Professor of Medical Humanities for the School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he did research on the biochemistry of human emotions, which he long believed were the key to human beings' success in fighting illness. It was a belief he maintained even as he battled heart disease, which he fought both by taking massive doses of Vitamin C and, according to him, by training himself to laugh. Late in life Cousins was diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis), although this diagnosis is currently in doubt and it has been suggested that Cousins may actually have had reactive arthritis. His struggle with this illness is detailed in the article he wrote for the New England Journal of Medicine in 1976, expanded into the book offered here, and made into the film, Anatomy of an Illness. Told that he had little chance of surviving, Cousins developed a recovery program incorporating megadoses of Vitamin C, along with a positive attitude, love, faith, hope, and laughter induced by Marx Brothers films. "I made the joyous discovery that ten minutes of genuine belly laughter had an anesthetic effect and would give me at least two hours of pain-free sleep," he reported. "When the pain-killing effect of the laughter wore off, we would switch on the motion picture projector again and not infrequently, it would lead to another pain-free interval." Cousins received the Albert Schweitzer Prize in 1990. He died of heart failure on November 30, 1990, in Los Angeles, California, having survived years longer than his doctors predicted.
PROVENANCE: CHARLES TAYLOR MANATT (1936 - 2011) was chairman of the Democratic National Committee from 1981 to 1985. He also served as Ambassador to the Dominican Republic from 1999 to 2001. He was the founder of the law firm Manatt, Phelps, and Phillips LLP, where his practice focused on international, administrative, and corporate law. (Inventory #: 1583)