Monday, October 21, 2019

The Cockroach Catcher: Reviews




Kindle comes in very handy, literally. Yes a 3rd generation gadget that allows you to store and read books and other printed material.   You can pack with you thousands of books on this device that weighs less than a paperback.



This has inspired me to launch a Kindle edition of The Cockroach Catcher (yes, the book).   More importantly, the Kindle edition costs a fraction of the physical copy.  If you do not yet own a Kindle, you can simply download the free Kindle software and read Kindle books on your iPhone, iPad , iPod touch & your Personal Computer. You can read the book within seconds from ordering.        US Verson





 Amazon Kindle UK £0.99, Amazon Kindle US $0.99


Here are some reviews:

I purchased Dr Am Ang Zhangs’ book last November and placed it at the bottom of my ‘to read’ pile – I should not have done so.

Holidaying earlier this year – I decided that ‘The Cockroach Catcher’ would be my holiday read (even though it was still only half way up the pile) – it was a good decision.

Am Ang takes you on a fine journey from his poor beginnings in China to his education in Hong Kong, his life and experience at medical school, his decision to enter psychiatry leading to a post as registrar at The Tavistock Clinic  and to his role as a consultant paediatric psychiatrist within the NHS (and many interesting places in between).

Dr Zhang had a common sense approach to the children in his care, intuitively finding the answer to their problems, cases ranging from sleep and toileting problems to those of anorexia, autism and psychosis - although towards the end of his career, red tape and ‘guidelines’ were to impact on his practice.

His book also gives insight as to how we as parents may influence the mental health of our children and how childhood is being medicalised when behaviours are due to lack of parental authority and/or guidance and are not psychiatric illness at all.

Although the back cover summary describes the book as a work of fiction, the contents are based on a good and a very real doctors’ journey through medicine.  It is a must read for all those either working in medicine or interested in child psychiatry and indeed childhood itself, and an invaluable read for parents who have concerns regarding their children’s mental health.

It is a fascinating well penned book with references documented in the footnotes and is available from  Amazon.  Visit the cockroach catcher here


Anna :o]

©2016 Am Ang Zhang

5.0 out of 5 stars
Format:Paperback
We all have stories to tell with regard to our experiences as physicians. Zhang is one of our medical school classmates who took it to a different level by writing and publishing a book. The book details how it all started, from the time his family moved to Hong Kong from China, to his years in medical school, to his experience as a child psychiatrist in the UK. The book is full of interesting case studies of actual patients he saw and the challenges he faced dealing with them.
I was captivated by many of the interesting stories in the book. It’s a must-read for all students of psychiatry. It also makes for good reading material for anyone during their leisure moments.

From another doctor friend:

The Cockroach Catcher has evoked many images, memories, emotions from my own family circumstances and clinical experience.

My 80 year old Mum has a long-standing habit of collecting old newspaper and gossip magazines. Stacks of paper garbage filled every room of her apartment, which became a fire hazard. My siblings tricked her into a prolonged holiday, emptied the flat and refurbished the whole place ten years ago. ……My eldest son was very pretty as a child and experienced severe OCD symptoms, necessitating consultations with a psychiatrist at an age of 7 years. The doctor shocked us by advising an abrupt change of school or we would "lose" him, so he opined. He was described as being aloft and detached as a child. He seldom smiled after arrival of a younger brother. He was good at numbers and got a First in Maths from a top college later on. My wife and I always have the diagnosis of autism in the back of our mind. Fortunately, he developed good social skills and did well at his college. He is a good leader and co-ordinator at the workplace. We feel relieved now and the years of sacrifice (including me giving up private practice and my wife giving up a promising administrative career ) paid off.

Your pragmatic approach to problem solving and treatment plans is commendable in the era of micro-managed NHS and education system. I must admit that I learn a great deal about the running of NHS psychiatric services and the school system.

Objectively, a reader outside of the UK would find some chapters in the book intriguing because a lot of space was devoted to explaining the jargons (statementing, section, grammar schools) and the NHS administrative systems. Of course, your need to clarify the peculiar UK background of your clinical practice is understandable.

Your sensitivity and constant reference to the feelings, background and learning curves of your sub-ordinates and other members of the team are rare attributes of psychiatric bosses, whom I usually found lacking in affect! If more medical students have access to your book, I'm sure many more will choose psychiatry as a career. The Cockroach Catcher promotes the human side of clinical psychiatric practice in simple language that an outsider can appreciate. An extremely outstanding piece of work indeed.

From Australia:

I have finished reading The Cockroach Catcher and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Zhang, I particularly liked the juxtaposition and paralleling of your travel stories and observations with your case studies, Of course, I could appreciate it even more, knowing the author and hearing your voice in the text. Because I’m dealing with anorexia, ADD and ADHD students I was very interested in your experiences with patients and parents and your treatment. Amazing how many parents are the underlying causes of their offspring’s angst. It was an eminently readable text for the medically uninitiated like me. Keep writing, Zhang
 Squid ©2010 Am Ang Zhang
From another doctor:

Absolutely riveting! Brings me back to working (in NHS psychiatry) when work was really interesting! The tone is quite conversational; it is like hearing you telling stories. I ordered more copies for my family and friends.

I knew it would be very special and it sure is. To us your trainees it is like going back on the rotation to have the joy of working with you again. The difference is that l can now learn at leisure from this book. Congratulations.
The book is very well written and makes very easy and interesting reading even for the laymen. You learn a lot about the Health System, a lot about child psychiatry and a lot about the growing up and development of the author.

Fascinating account of child psychiatry cases, including some creative yet effective treatments. Anyone who is a parent or around children or really anyone at all actually will find the book surprising, entertaining, thought-provoking, funny and moving.

The book makes me realize the difficult decisions with which a doctor is so often faced, the need for him to have faith in himself and, coupled with that, the need for continued idealism and enthusiasm. These don't, of course, apply only to doctors but are particularly important for them.

Great book. I have bought one to give to my son on his birthday.


From Chez Sam’s:

And CC, your book is amazing! I am only on page 44 but so far, so wonderful. I think how you turned this anorexia patient around just goes to show what human interaction rather than tick box protocols can do in a short period of time and at low cost too. This is an exemplary illustration on perhaps one of the reasons why a good health system like the one in Singapore can not be fully implemented in Britain. it's the change of perceptions and methodology to suit that's difficult.

And, as a city girl, I found your early life in villages fascinating and very enriching for a bright child like yourself, I suppose, had I been your mother, I too would have not asked you any questions when you were told to leave that school ... but the school supplier of cockroaches! [shiver]Dearime! I run a mile when I see one, let alone catch them and dissect them! boys will be boys after all, now that I know that you weren't joking. you are a cockroach catcher, not only of the soul, but for real! @@

The book is a must read doc, I am really enjoying it :-)”

More here>>>>>>

From the LUL
U.com website, where you can preview the chapter Seven Minute Cure and if you so wish, order a copy of the book (after creating your own account):

Fascinat
ing! What a great read. Just reading the one chapter made me want to read the whole book. Thank you!
A beautiful opening! A piece written with of all that wit, intelligence and sarcasm! The author has managed to illustrate a boring NHS subject in the most interesting of ways. He has convinced me to read on. The NHS should urgently seek help and advice from this doctor!
Thank goodness for doctors like these!! If the rest of the book is as good as the preview chapter then it will be a fantastic resource for practitioners and the public. 
Fascinating preview chapter. I can't wait to read more.
Horrah for the doctor. Chapter 1: The Seven Minute Cure. The doctor overcame the obstacles faced from the establishment and freed a young child from her prison. Great read.
Other reviews and feedback:
Absolutely riveting! Brings me back to working (in NHS psychiatry) when work was really interesting! The tone is quite conversational; it is like hearing you telling stories. I ordered more copies for my family and friends.
I knew it would be very special and it sure is. To us your trainees it is like going back on the rotation to have the joy of working with you again. The difference is that l can now learn at leisure from this book. Congratulations.
The book is very well written and makes very easy and interesting reading even for thelaymen. You learn a lot about the Health System, a lot about child psychiatry and a lot about the growing up and development of the author.
Fascinating account of child psychiatry cases, including some creative yet effectivetreatments. Anyone who is a parent or around children or really anyone at all actually will find the book surprising, entertaining, thought-provoking, funny and moving.
The book makes me realize the difficult decisions with which a doctor is so often faced, theneed for him to have faith in himself and, coupled with that, the need for continued idealism and enthusiasm. These don't, of course, apply only to doctors but are particularly important for them.
Great book. I have bought one to give to my son on his birthday.
(Note: both father and son are doctors.)




I was in Special Education for many years. I just love the way you dealt with the girl who was bullied, and the boy with Behaviour Disorder. I am buying two more copies, one for my friend who is a psychologist and one for a colleague in Special Education.

I wish I had read your book when I was headmistress. I would have had so much more insight into why some of the pupils behaved the way they did.
I have been a school counsellor for 15 years and we have had regular recommendations on books to read. None of them taught us as much as your book, which would have been very useful for our weekly screening meeting discussions.
Reading the book and his blog, you cannot help admiring the author's width and depth of knowledge, the light-heartedness, the humility, the humane and the human side of people.
You learn a lot about the Health System, a lot about child psychiatry and a lot about the growing up and development of the author. 
What a book! I cried a little. I laughed a little. I know I should not. 
Your stories are amazing. I really enjoy reading it. 
My wife cannot put your book down and I shall not be able to get my hands on it until she has finished.
I was horrified by some of the gruesome cases and agonised at the suffering of some of your patients. But there are moments of laughter and smile at Dr Zhang's wit in handling the cases and patients.
Am Ang, thank you for a wonderful book. You know I could not put it down. My husband is now reading it and he said it is such an easy read as he thought it was all going to be heavy and clinical.
You have such a way with the little ones. What about the 12 year old pretending to be three and a half! My goodness.
Just the village life can fill a book. (Seriously an in-depth version will be much welcome!) Book two can be Life at HKU. And so on... Fascinating!
Having grown up in farming country, I love the Chapter on The Village. I know it is different but so much about village life just clicked with me. Makes me wants to go home to have a look. I would like you to write more about yourself. Just all the little details you are so good with.
I wish I had your book when I was bringing up my kids. I am giving each of my two children a copy. I decided to put down Pillars of The Earth for a while and start your book on a flight. I could not put it down to go to sleep. Wow: it makes so much sense.
I did expect the cover photo to be one of yours – after all, the creative mind needs full exposure, artistic and otherwise. I was just recommending it to some friends.
I never imagine I can have so much fun and gain so much knowledge by reading a book of this sort by, of course, an author with a sense of humour and a deep understanding of human nature. I really enjoyed reading it. Life could be so much easier if we had the chance to do what we like, to let our thoughts be shared by someone we trust, to make sugar pills of nasty encounters and so on and so forth for bearing more positive thinking. Just by a mere short conversation, which hit exactly at the 'dead pit' of the hiccup boy, the hiccup was over. Human nature is just like that. After reading the author's accounts of his cases, I wish I could also be endowed with such wit and wisdom, not so much for curing others, but to let my own body and soul remain healthy and sound always.
Love it. I read it in three days flat. Not only should parents read it; I think all those in the medical profession should read it. There is so much common sense. I am recommending it to my book club. Will you come and talk to them about it?




Friday, August 8, 2014


Monday, October 14, 2019

Flat Earth & Miracles: He will never learn to speak!

It is reassuring that there are still people that were kind enough to risk everything in order to help others in desperate need. It became more upsetting when you realised that the kind-hearted person has been duped. But then even government has been duped into paying millions of our money to so called charitable organizations we can hardly blame any individual except of course the individual is not losing other people’s money but their own.


Photoshop Miracle:

Black Currant Miracles © 2012 Am Ang Zhang


        It is not my intention, either as an individual or as a scientist, to express an opinion on religious visions and miracles. Science has generally failed to understand these phenomena and many religions on the whole have tended to ignore scientific explanations.
        For the religious amongst us, a close study of the history of religion would have seen deliberate attempts a couple of millennia ago to trick people into believing certain things supernatural. In a recent visit to Ephesus, we heard tales of how early “Christians” were duped and “cured”.
        When the Western World was in the tight grip of the Catholic Church, the Jesuits were generally regarded as the greatest scholars. They brought Western culture and religion to the East. They must have had a glimpse of the Chinese understanding of the universe and the world. Yet for so long the religious view of Flat Earth held true. Did the Jesuit scholars know the truth or did they pretend not to in order to avoid persecution and possible death? We shall never know.
        Many “visions” have proved to be the work of errant brain waves due either to epilepsy or brain tumours. Yet the Church continued to celebrate these phenomena.
The first picture is the original: the rest miracles!


From my book The Cockroach Catcher Chapter 15: Miracles:

Second Miracle
         The second “miracle” I am going to recount was again not experienced by myself but occurred none other than where most miracles happened.
         Jerusalem.
         And in the 20th Century.
         I heard about it at a World Congress on Infant Psychiatry held in Chicago.
         Generally the big plenary sessions at nine in the morning were reserved for the big presentations. Given that it was an Infant Psychiatry Congress, one was surprised to be having a presentation of a case of an older child.
         Yet this was a presentation by one of the most respected professorial units in Jerusalem. The hall was packed and word must have got out that this was going to be good.
         The professor was himself on stage. He was already rather old, but when he spoke he did so with authority and a certain air of natural arrogance. It was the kind of arrogance that came as a matter of course to one who had made a discovery of some kind that none of us in the hall, except his team, had heard of. Perhaps pride is a better word to describe it, but no matter.  Something big.
         His presentation involved the showing of some film clips, one of which was from the BBC archives.
         This boy suffered from severe epilepsy from a very early age and was on four different medications. He never acquired speech, ever.
         He had a younger brother, bright and very advanced, who was reading well before the age of three, not unusual for Jewish boys you might say, but unusual given his brother could not speak.
         His mother sought help for him over the years, and by the time he was twelve, most specialists she consulted told her there was a critical period after which a child would never acquire speech.
         She had said her fair share of prayers at the Synagogue.
         One day, unbeknownst to her, her genius toddler took an overdose of his brother’s medications. He was found in time and his life was not threatened. For four full days after he came out of intensive care, he stopped talking altogether.
         It suddenly occurred to her that it could be the medication that was holding her son back.
         She immediately secured a consultation at a top hospital and the consultant said that it was possible to use other methods to control the epilepsy. 
         But it would be drastic, as it involved removing nearly half of his brain.
         “Without medication would he learn to speak?”
         Now this was where the BBC film cut to a big picture of the lady consultant who said, “Never. He is beyond the critical age. He will never learn to speak. Never ever.”
         The Professor in a very solemn voice said from the podium, “She is not one of ours.”
         The boy had the operation. He was now free from epilepsy and free from any medication.
         Mother decided to emigrate to Israel and seek help in the Promised Land.
         “What a wise move.” The Professor interjected again.
         The boy now came under the Professor’s care, and a big team of different therapists started working on him.
         And mother’s prayers were at last answered.
         The boy now spoke fluent Hebrew and reasonable English. Not one but two languages.
         I remembered what one Rabbi said to me at our friend’s son’s Bar Mitzvah, “You know our God will give, but we must work hard.”
         And Old Mac:  Never say never.


Flat Earth & Miracles: Duping & Human Kindness!


To remember our eminent yet formidable Professor of Medicine, Professor MacFadzean: One Patient One Disease.
I would like to pay tribute to our eminent yet formidable Professor of Medicine, Professor MacFadzean, 'Old Mac' as he was 'affectionately' known by us. He taught us two important things right from the start:

First - One patient, one disease. It is useful to assume that a patient is suffering from a single disease, and that the different manifestations all spring from the same basic disease.

Second - Never say never. One must never be too definitive in matters of prognosis. What if one is wrong?



Monday, October 7, 2019

The 2019 Medicine Laureates


 Niklas Elmedhed. © Nobel Media.
The 2019 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is awarded jointly to William G. Kaelin JrSir Peter J. Ratcliffe and Gregg L. Semenza “for their discoveries of how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability.” They identified molecular machinery that regulates the activity of genes in response to varying levels of oxygen.



This year’s Nobel Laureates revealed the mechanism for one of life’s most essential adaptive processes. They established the basis for our understanding of how oxygen levels affect cellular metabolism and physiological function. Their discoveries have also paved the way for promising new strategies to fight anemia, cancer and many other diseases.



Nobel 2016 in Physics: Gonville & Caius College Cambridge.  David Thouless (Trinity Hall, 1952), Duncan Haldane (Christ’s, 1970) and Michael Kosterlitz (Gonville and Caius, 1962) - Nobel Prize in Physics for theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter









Aug 11, 2013 ... This year's Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine goes to Barry Marshall and Robin Warren, who with tenacity and a prepared mind ...
Jul 26, 2009 ... He was the winner of the Nobel Prize for 2000. In his book In Search Of Memory, he remembered his arrival in New York in 1939 after a year ...


Mar 3, 2008 ... However, you may be too late to get the Nobel Prize. Rodney Porter in 1972 was awarded the NobelPrize in Medicine for his ground breaking ...

Oct 5, 2015 ... Three scientists from Ireland , Japan and China have won the Nobel prize in medicine for discoveries that helped doctors fight malaria and ...


Oct 9, 2008 ... The three winners of the Nobel Prize for chemistry are (from right) Roger Tsien of the University of California, San Diego; Osamu Shimomura, ...