Dr. William David Manahan, MD

I've never met a doctor that's such a good listener.

I am thankful to Dr. Bill Manahan, former Mankato family practice physician, who in the mid 1980s recognized that routine prescribing of antibiotics was unnecessary and in many cases caused more harm than good. Dr. Manahan once told me he often felt guilty prescribing antibiotics. When our daughter was seeing him approximately every 3 weeks for ear infections, bronchitis, and even strep throat, he encouraged Steve and I to stop the formula supplementation for our daughter Carly. I was receiving free formula from the hospital formula representative, since I worked in the OB department. Though I was on my way to weaning Carly from breastfeeding (we were down to 1-2 feedings per day by 11 months of age), upon Dr. Manahan's encouragement we gave up the formula and increased the nursing. Carly was only happy to ablige and nursed her way into tottlerhood. The repeated infections went away. Upon attempting to resume milk products 6 months later, she started becoming sick again. We gave up the… milk products once again, and effectively removed many of the infections and antibiotics that might otherwise have been prescribed for her. I credit Dr. Manahan, with his pioneering advocacy of preventative medicine for reducing the frequency of illnesses in our four children; discouraging the use of routine antibiotics when they became ill; encouraging us to "eat our way" to better health through improved nutritiion; and leading us to finding alternative holistic methods for treating illnesses when they occurred.