Let me see. what would the code be for the very same thing using XML::Rules:

use XML::Rules;

my $xml = q{<eSummaryResult>
  <DocSum>
   <Id>25</Id>
   <Item Name="Description" Type="String">Ableson Murine</Item>
  </DocSum>
  <DocSum>
   <Id>26</Id>
   <Item Name="Description" Type="String">yada yada</Item>
  </DocSum>
  <DocSum>
   <Id>27</Id>
   <Item Name="Description" Type="String">yada yada something else</It
+em>
  </DocSum>
</eSummaryResult>
};

my $parser = XML::Rules->new(
  rules => [
    Item => sub { $_[1]->{Name} => $_[1]->{_content}},
    Id => 'content',
    DocSum => sub {
      print "$_[1]->{Id}, $_[1]->{Description}\n";
      return;
    },
  ]
);

$parser->parse($xml);
[download]

There's less code to get the job done without XSLT then there is to apply it. And I'm sure you'd get the same result using most other modules.

I find XSLT incredibly clumsy, blithering and unreadable.