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“This book is a necklace of pearls that every medical student would do well to wear during medical school, if not before.”
– Daniel Lowenstein, M.D., Dean of Medical Education, Harvard Medical School — Review

“A neurologist who claims to be equally interested in disease and people, Sacks (Awakenings, etc.) explores neurological disorders with a novelist’s skill and an appreciation of his patients as human beings. These cases, some of which have appeared in literary or medical publications, illustrate the tragedy of losing neurological facultiesmemory, powers of visualization, word-recognitionor the also-devastating fate of those suffering an excess of neurological functions causing such hyper states as chorea, tics, Tourette’s syndrome and Parkinsonism. Still other patients experience organically based hallucinations, transports, visions, etc., usually deemed to be psychic in nature. The science of neurology, Sacks charges, stresses the abstract and computerized at the expense of judgment and emotional depthsin his view, the most important human qualities. Therapy for brain-damaged patients (by medication, accommodation, music or art) should, he asserts, be designed to help restore the essentially personal quality of the individual.”

“I wish I had read this book when I was in medical school, and I’m glad I’ve read it now. Most readers will know Jerome Groopman from his essays in the New Yorker, which take on a wide variety of complex medical conditions, evocatively communicating the tensions and emotions of both doctors and patients.But this book is something different: a sustained, incisive and sometimes agonized inquiry into the processes by which medical minds””brilliant, experienced, highly erudite medical minds””synthesize information and understand illness. How Doctors Think is mostly about how these doctors get it right, and about why they sometimes get it wrong.”

“The Classic Novel of Life and Death in an American Hospital.” A must read for all medical students. From the Introduction: “We expect the world of doctors. Out of our own need, we revere them; we imagine that their training and expertise and saintly dedication have purged them of all the uncertainty, trepidation, and disgust that we would feel in their position, seeing what they see and being asked to cure it. Blood and vomit and pus do not revolt them; senility and dementia have no terrors; it does not alarm them to plunge into the slippery tangle of internal organs, or to handle the infected and contagious.”

“What Oliver Sacks does for the mind, Gonzalez-Crussi (On Being Born and Other Difficulties) does for the eye in this captivating set of philosophical meditations on the relationship between the viewer and the viewed. The author, amused and amazed by our desire to see what is forbidden, draws on historical and cultural examples, from Actaeon spying on the goddess Diana to a pair of voyeurs in revolutionary France who unwittingly incite a massacre. Mixed in with such accounts are personal reflections drawn from medicine (Gonzalez-Crussi is professor emeritus of pathology at Northwestern’s medical school). He is astounded, for example, at how many people have pestered him for access to an autopsy, just to say they’d seen one. The ornate sentences are filled with stunning images, like his description of an infant just emerged from the womb, bloody, “weakly flailing his arms” and crying, appearing to the author not as a symbol of life but as resembling “a foot-soldier in a defeated army, a pitiful survivor in a catastrophic retreat,” and his prose never loses its elegance, even when the stories he tells veer into the bawdy. Not every anecdote resonates perfectly, but Gonzalez-Crussi is a charming raconteur who will win over readers with his thoughts on our visual connection to the world around us.”

“Gently dismantling the myth of medical infallibility, Dr. Atul Gawande’s Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science is essential reading for anyone involved in medicine–on either end of the stethoscope. Medical professionals make mistakes, learn on the job, and improvise much of their technique and self-confidence. Gawande’s tales are humane and passionate reminders that doctors are people, too. His prose is thoughtful and deeply engaging, shifting from sometimes painful stories of suffering patients (including his own child) to intriguing suggestions for improving medicine with the same care he expresses in the surgical theater. Some of his ideas will make health care providers nervous or even angry, but his disarming style, confessional tone, and thoughtful arguments should win over most readers. Complications is a book with heart and an excellent bedside manner, celebrating rather than berating doctors for being merely human.”

“A surgeon at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and an assistant professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, Dr. Atul Gawande succeeds in putting a human face on controversial topics like malpractice and global disparities in medical care, while taking an unflinching look at his own failings as a doctor. Critics appreciated his candor, his sly sense of humor, and his skill in examining difficult issues from many perspectives. He conveys his message””that doctors are only human and therefore must always be diligent and resourceful in fulfilling their duties””in clear, confident prose. Most critics’ only complaint was that half of the essays are reprints of earlier articles. Gawande’s arguments, by turns inspiring and unsettling, may cause you to see your own doctor in a whole new light.”

“Drawing upon his own broad experience and the characteristics of the six most common death-causing diseases, Nuland examines what death means to the doctor, patient, nurse, administrator, and family. Thought provoking and humane, his is not the usual syrup-and-generality approach to this well-worn topic. Fundamental to it are Nuland’s experiences with the deaths of his aunt, his older brother, and a longtime patient. With each of these deaths, he made what he now sees as mistakes of denial, false hope, and refusal to abide by a patient’s wishes. Disease, not death, is the real enemy, he reminds us, despite the facts that most deaths are unpleasant, painful, or agonized, and to argue otherwise is to plaster over the truth. The doctor, Nuland stresses, should instill in dying patients the hope not for a miraculous cure but for the dignity and high quality of the remainder of their lives as well as of what they have meant–and will continue to mean–to family, friends, and colleagues. Nuland also has strong feelings about suicide and “assisted death”: the doctor should be prepared psychologically and practically to help the longtime patient slip off the scene in relative comfort.”