‘Nothing is worse than a familiar enemy’ goes a well-known proverb and perhaps nowhere is it more appropriate than in the case of common ailments. While people rush too often and too soon to doctors for diseases like diabetes and angina pectoris, they tend to take more familiar diseases for granted. Take the case of headache, for example. Perhaps all of us are aware of that friendly middle-aged lady in our neighborhood who gets a headache all too often and who takes a tablet of aspirin all by herself to relieve her headache. Such a practice is perhaps quite acceptable for a couple of occasions but by repeatedly doing it she may be suppressing the ‘warning cry’ of the body, trying to caution her of some serious disorder. There are a host of other common ailments which one tends to take for granted, yet which could be the early signs warning the sufferer of some grave disorder. There is a strong case then to know something about these common ailments. An attempt is made in this book to identify a few such common ailments and give some interesting information about them. There is yet another reason why we must know about them. Knowing something about our body and its common ailments is much like knowing our automobile and its common troubles. We may not be able to mend our automobile ourselves, but once we know about its working and its common troubles, we take care of our automobile more intelligently and use it in such a way that it ‘falls sick’ less often. Not only that, if it does ‘fall sick’, we can interact with the mechanic more fruitfully and more intelligently, and an unscrupulous mechanic would be hard put to take us for a ride. Almost the same function is served by knowing some common ailments of our body. These are the ailments which all of us suffer from day in and day out. Once we know more about them, we can ensure that we don’t fall prey to them again and again, and if we do fall ill we could at least interact with our family doctor in a more meaningful way. This way we help our doctor by conveying to him more useful information and consequently help ourselves. It is hoped that by going through the pages of this book we would become more informed about our body and its working in health and disease. If, besides informing the reader, this book is also able to entertain and amuse the reader, its purpose would have been served.
