Abraham Nussbaum

What happens when you neglect public health for decades? A Lewis book can feel like a ready-made– assemble a scrappy band of profane characters who see things to which their sclerotic masters are blind and then wind them up into an I told you so— but damn if it don’t read well. More than most,…

“I shall do nothing to discourage my patient, Monseigneur, any more than I shall bleed him, as many good people urge me to do. The mind, too, has a kind of blood: in common speech we call it hope.” I adored all this novel of frontier Kebec, and its descriptions of medicine, but this line…

Damn @praddenkeefe, this was one was devastating. Hippocrates said doctors harvest misfortunes of their own to rid the sick of their disease and suffering. The Sacklers inverted the formula, harvesting a fortune off patient’s misfortunes. A deeply-reported account of how the Sackler family fed the opioid epidemic, it can also be read as a story…

Greene’s remarkable account of suicide as the satisfaction theory of atonement describes Dr. Travis as earnest and reverent as a priest. “…he treated the body with great respect; when he rapped the chest he did it slowly, carefully, with his ear bowed close as though he really expected somebody or something to rap back.” Scobie,…

@janicenimura brings the 19th c. alive. If the future is female, it’s thanks to the Blackwell sisters. They blazed different paths through medicine that, although celebrated in their era, are far easier to see today because of Nimura’s work. A great example of how a good historian works.    

Why so divided? We maximize individual merit at the expense of the common good. So sayeth Sandel. And sayeth definitively. I dare anyone to finish this book wanting to defend today’s meritocracy. One suggestion: in his account of how to better college admissions, I kept wanting him to explore the NRMP Match as an option.

Reading Wright feels like a clean transcript of an explicit nightmare, which makes it all the more revolting. An expected virus caused an unaccustomed ravage. Why? Wright narrates the failure of diverse authorities– complacent powers, inept leadership, a polarized polis–  as a kind of Swiss cheese diagram for a worldwide adverse event. There is more…

Dr. Percival favors smoked trout, but he feeds his patients red herrings. Percival is a bit of a stock villain, but even stock villains have the feel of the real in Greene’s novels. Percival inverts the therapeutic alliance, giving the truth to the novel’s warning: “he who forms a tie is lost.”

Knowledge. Experience. Responsibility. Sinclair, a physician turned anthropologist, charts their reinforcement as the NHS makes students into doctors capable of being “On Take” with their “bleep.” Medical training gives you an education and a license. To get both, you have to learn how to “pathologize the world.”

Dialectical thinking depends upon close attention to details; so does doctoring. “If life were not so urgent I would be willing to spend a year talking to a great batsman, asking him questions and probing into all sorts of aspects of his life on and off the cricket field. If he and hit it off…

Shelley’s plague novel includes what could be a physician’s oath: “I am now going to undertake an office fitted for me. I cannot intrigue, or work a tortuous path through the labyrinth of men’s vices and passions; but I can bring patience, and sympathy, and such aid as art affords, to the bed of disease….”

Few of my books are tear-stained. This one is. I never met Brian Doyle, but I know him. Read this so you will too. Doyle exhibits the curiosity and wonder of the great physician, but with a paternal humor. “Remember–otters. Otters rule. And so: amen.”