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As recently as two years ago, few people had even heard of Weil. Since 1995, few people haven't. Weil's newest book, 8 Weeks to Optimum Health, a familiar mix of herbal medicine and nutrition and life-style tips, is entering its eighth week at the top of the best-seller lists, with more than 650,000 copies in print. An earlier book, Spontaneous Healing, is in its 65th week on the lists, with a press run of more than 1 million. His site on the World Wide Web--cozily titled "Ask Dr. Weil"--recorded 1 million hits in April alone (and he is currently in discussion with Time New Media, a corporate cousin of this magazine, about affiliating with the Pathfinder Website). His recent appearances on PBS stations around the country drew record audiences; his audio CD of music and meditations is selling briskly. He is, by any measure, the man of the moment in America's eternal search for an alternative to the conventional, interventionist, pharmaceutical medicine most of us grew up thinking of as the only medicine there is.
The appeal of alternative healers and their uncommon cures is hardly new. Nationwide, health-care consumers spend nearly $14 billion a year for medical treatments rarely offered by the family doctor. Deepak Chopra, the India-born endocrinologist, spiritualist and publishing juggernaut, has enjoyed perennial best-seller status since the 1993 publication of Ageless Body, Timeless Mind. Other author-healers, from Dr. Bernie Siegel to Marianne Williamson, have enriched themselves and their publishers by offering a buffet of alternative approaches that range from meditation and visualization to the curative powers of love and positive thinking.
What distinguishes Weil from the rest is his radical eclecticism. Almost any treatment can have a place in his healing universe, so long as it doesn't cause harm.
Indeed, much of what Weil recommends is pretty simple stuff: self-administered, commonsense cures like eating less fat, getting more exercise and reducing stress. He leads readers a little farther afield when he introduces them to herbalism, acupuncture, naturopathy, osteopathy, chiropractic and hypnotism, although most of these protocols fall into the can't-hurt-could-help category. Where he may get into trouble is when he wanders farther still, uncritically endorsing treatments such as cranial manipulation that seem like folly even to many alternative-medicine believers. For skeptics looking for reasons to dismiss Weil, this kind of at-the-fringes medicine provides more than enough.
Where Weil wins many of his critics back, however--and where the genius of his appeal may lie--is when he avoids straying from the medical fold at all. Throughout his books he concedes that for all the promise of his alternative cures, sometimes the best answer is the one consumers are most familiar with: the high-tech medicine of the industrialized West.
In a field filled as much with dogmatists as doctors, this is nothing short of revolutionary. "There's a lot that conventional medicine does well," Weil says, "and in many cases, it's just what's called for. If I'm in a car accident, don't take me to an herbalist. If I have bacterial pneumonia, give me antibiotics. But when it comes to maximizing the body's natural healing potential, a mix of conventional and alternative procedures seems like the only answer."