Summary:

An artist, Ruth, lives with quadriplegia and manages to drive (and dance) with a special wheelchair that she controls with her chin. She also enjoys terrorizing doctors in the hospital corridors, where she is seen on a regular basis because of frequent bouts of infected bedsores. She has a new computer and is “patiently waiting for” a biomedical engineer to set it up to manage, like her chair, with her chin. She wants to write, to draw, to create. But the wait list is long, technicians scarce, and every candidate deserving.

On one of her admissions, Ruth meets the physician-narrator who is appalled by a medical resident’s lack of empathy in relating her case as if she were not present. Distressed by the encounter, the doctor is all the more disturbed when he notices that Ruth’s birth date is the same as his own.

He tries to make it up to her by withdrawing from her care in order to be her “friend,” one who tries to understand and will defend her strong desire to live despite her disability. Driven by curiosity about her past, her sharp wit, and how she faces each day, the doctor never quite achieves his goal and constantly feels guilty for letting her down as an advocate and a friend, and possibly also for being able-bodied himself.  He never visited her in her group home, and when she comes to hospital in florid sepsis, he is unable to prevent his colleagues from letting nature take its course. His own bout with severe illness, possibly MS—more likely a stroke--resonates with Ruth’s plight. Long after her death, he can imagine the acid remarks that she would make about his foibles.

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Hillel D. Braude, a physician and a philosopher, has written an important, albeit dense and narrowly circumscribed, study. While “Intuition in Medicine” is the main title, the subtitle, “A Philosophical Defense of Clinical Reasoning” is a more accurate description of the book, which originated as a doctoral dissertation.  While some of the prose will appeal only to specialists, there are important and thoughtful analyses of such topics as Evidence-Based Medicine, modern dehumanized medicine, the relation of beneficence and automony, and principalist ethics in general. Throughout, intuition is narrowly conceived and in the service of clinical reasoning, as it applies to standard, Western physicians and not to other healers (or nurses), and the emphasis is on interventive medicine to cure illness and relieve suffering more than on health promotion.
 
Braude writes in the introduction that intuition has long been understood to be “a direct perception of things,” but he resists a more precise definition: “Rather than defining and using a single concept of intuition—philosophical, practical, or neuroscientific—this study examines intuition as it occurs at different levels and in different contexts of clinical reasoning” (xviii).  Eight chapters explore these different levels in such topics as moral intuitionism, Aristotle’s phronesis (or practical reason), the rise of statistics (a basis for Evidence-Based Medicine), and C. S. Peirce’s notion of abduction. Braude’s careful analysis traces historical and theoretical developments in analytic philosophy and how these may be applied to clinical reasoning.  He uses an impressive range of thinkers: Achenwall, Albert, Allan, Andre, Ashcroft, Aristotle, Bacon, Barrow, Barton, Beauchamp, Bergson, Bernard, Bichat, Black, Bottero, Bourdieu, Brody, Browne—just to take names headed by A or B.  Throughout, Braude puts in dialectic two poles of a spectrum arguing that they both have contributions to make. He believes that between them is an “ethical space,” where discoveries and applications can be made.  One pole, which he clearly favors, includes the following qualities:  Aristotelian practical reasoning, naturalist approaches, primacy of beneficence, fact and value joined, case-based, individual patients, narrative experience, anthropocentric focus, and tacit/organic knowledge (Polanyi). The other pole, less desirable, includes Kantian abstraction, nonnaturalist approaches, primacy of autonomy, fact and value separated, Evidence-Based Medicine, large groups of patients, statistical correlations, mechanist/positivist foci, and Dualism (Descartes).

Braude believes intuition is a cognitive process but has other dimension, the corporeal and the social. While these provide a grounding, intuition for him is generally rational. He also argues for medical care at the personal, face-to-face level, not through applications of algorithms.   A brief conclusion, “Medical Ethics beyond Ontology” clarifies some of the arguments and sketches some valuable notions from Husserl and Levinas. He writes “intuition . . . does appear to be fundamental for human judgment” because “an intuition faculty” can “extract universals from the particular” (p. 170).  Drawing on Husserl, he defines phenomenological intuition as “the primary means through which objects are presented to consciousness.” This affirmation includes the basic human, which is also the focus for medicine. For Levinas (and my summary is much too brief), “interhuman solidarity” is a source for medical care, a form of responsibility that is different from Foucaultian power relationships, ethical rules and priniciples, or “an uncritical acceptance of medical authority” (p. 177).

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Intern, Maggie Altman, begins her postgraduate training in a large Texas hospital where a new computerized system has been implemented to improve service. She pours heart and soul into her work, but her admissions always seem to be the sickest patients who keep dying, sometimes inexplicably. Maggie becomes suspicious of her colleagues and of Dr. Milton Silber, an irrascible, retired clinician with no fondness for the new technology. Silber also happens to be a financial genius. Overhearing conversations and finding puzzling papers, Maggie imagines a scam, in which her supervisors may be eliminating dying patients to reduce costs, improve statistics, and siphon funds to their own pockets.

The bad outcomes for Maggie's patients are noticed and criticized, and she is pressured to drop out, switch hospitals, or go back into research. She senses that the perpetrators are aware of her suspicions and send her the worst patients in an effort to eliminate her. She trusts no one. These worries are compounded by her own illness and her accidental discovery in the morgue of a traffic in unclaimed bodies. With the help of excellent clinical skills, true friends, Dr. Silber, and a new love interest who is a budding financial genius, she survives physical and emotional violence and solves the mystery of patient homicides, poisonings, and fraud.

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Approaching age 60 and childless, Fiona Maye is a family court judge who must decide if 17 year-old Adam has the right to refuse blood transfusions for his leukemia. He and his parents are Jehovah’s Witnesses.  The Children Act does not allow a child to make this decision until age 18. Fiona is an atheist and her 35-year marriage to an academic is falling apart.  She takes the extraordinary step of visiting Adam to know him and understand his conviction. He is beautiful and gifted, he writes poetry and plays violin. Why would he not want to try to live? She makes her decision having no idea if it will be morally, legally or medically right. To say more would spoil it.

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Victoria Sweet describes her training in medical school, residency, and work in various clinics and hospitals. From all of these she forms her own sense of what medical care should include: “Slow Medicine” that uses, ironically, the best aspects of today’s “Fast” medicine.   

Her dramatic “Introduction: Medicine Without a Soul” describes poor—even dangerous—care given to her elderly father at a hospital. An experienced physician, she calls Hospice and saves him from a “Death Express” the hospital has “quality-assured” (pp. 6, 8). 
 
The book continues with 16 chapters in chronological order. The first ten describe Sweet from a late ‘60s Stanford undergrad and “a sort of hippie” (p.14), next a learner of “facts” in preclinical studies at Harvard, plus the clinical rotations (including Psychiatry, Internal Medicine, Pediatrics, and electives), then an internship as a doctor and her work in various clinics and hospitals. Throughout she’s collecting skills, concepts, even philosophies (Jung, feminism, Chinese chi, value of stories). She also describes particular patients important to her learning. She dislikes “just good enough” medicine at the VA (p. 95), “unapologetic budgetarianism” (p 141), medicine that is reductive and uncaring, and futile care for dying patients.  

Halfway through, we find an “Intermission: In which Fast Medicine and Slow Medicine Come Together.” With a year off, Sweet signs on as physician for a trekking group headed for Nepal. Unexpectedly, she treats an Englishman in the Himalayas. Returning home, she treats a man whose pulse is declining and rides a helicopter with him to a hospital. She realizes that she can take on the full responsibility of being a doctor, including when to use Fast medicine and when to use Slow.  

The following chapters deal with the 1980s emergence of AIDS, a hand injury to Sweet (she sees herself as “a wounded healer,” p. 182), her new understanding of medicine as “A Craft, A Science, and an Art” (Chapter 12) and conflicts between medical care and economics-driven medicine (“checked boxes,” administrators, quality assurance, even outright corruption).  She scorns use of the labels “health-care providers” and “health-care consumers” (p. 211) and discovers Hildegard of Bingen’s medieval vision of medicine. She works for 20 years at Laguna Honda, the topic of her earlier book God’s Hotel (2012). Chapter 16 closes the book with “A Slow Medicine Manifesto.”  

Sweet pays tribute to her teachers, both in a dedication to the book, and throughout the pages: professors, preceptors, nurses—especially a series of Irish Kathleens—and patients. There are some 20 case studies of patients throughout the book, their medical dilemmas, their personalities, and Sweet’s Slow Medicine that involves creating a healing relationship with them, finding the right path for treatment, even watching and waiting.

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This powerful—even disturbing—book examines the state of Louisiana, a home of the Tea Party, multiple polluting industries (oil, chemicals), environmental degradation, bad health for all, including children, and politics and economics that favor corporations not local business. 

In Part One, “The Great Paradox,” sociologist Hochschild interviews locals, attends civic events, sits in cafes, and listens to stories. Bit by bit she understands that right-leaning people believe in Republican notions of less governmental regulation despite suffering from the ill effects of living in “red” states, even individual counties, that are the most polluted in the U.S. (pp. 79-80).  She calls this disparity “the great paradox.” Locals call a portion of the Mississippi between Baton Rouge and New Orleans “Cancer Alley” (p. 62), but there is no popular demand for control of pollution.

Part Two, “The Social Terrain” discusses history. Earlier, Louisiana had economies of fishing and farming in tune with the landscape. New industries, including Big Oil changed all that, with promises of jobs and wealth for all—neither of which occurred, because oil is largely mechanized, and wealth went to corporations, some headquartered in other countries. Further, there was not just pollution but also large sinkholes and the BP Horizon blow-out of 2010. Problems of on-going pollution were ignored by the Press, especially Fox news, and the “Pulpit” (evangelistic Christianity) took the longer view, urging continued human exploitation of nature, patience for ultimate rewards, and the hope that “the rapture” would ultimately save the most worthy Christians.

Part Three is “The Deep Story and the People in it.” Hochschild formulates an unspoken but motivating narrative of values in Louisiana. This metaphoric story represents deep feelings, including urges for a success that is always thwarted. In the story, there is a long line of white, Christian people, mostly male, often with limited education, waiting in line patiently to climb a hill. On the other side is a good job, wealth, security, and reward for the long waiting. Tragically, there are “line cutters,” symbolized by President Obama and other blacks who had various preferments, but also women, also immigrants, also refugees, even the brown pelican, the Louisiana state bird that needs clean water and fish to survive. The people in line feel betrayed. Where is progress toward the American Dream? Fair play? There is hatred toward the line cutters, and loyalty toward the similar people in line and the industries that will save them. Pollution is unfortunate but a necessary cost.

“Going National” is the fourth part. Hochschild reviews the plantations of the South that not only brutalized slaves but also caused poor whites to move to non-productive land, while the wealthy always improved their lot. People from the North were (and are) suspect, with policies of integration, abortion, gun control, etc. The North cut in line. People in Louisiana became “strangers in their own land” and therefore glad to support not only Governor Bobby Jindal (who “left the state in shambles,” p. 232) but also Trump who would “make American great again.” The “strangers” have gone national in the U.S. and even in some other countries. Hochschild drafts two short “letters,” one to the liberal left and the other to the Louisiana people. She suggests that the two polarized groups have more in common than they currently imagine.  

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This Side of Doctoring is an anthology published in 2002 about the experiences of women in medicine. While the essays span multiple centuries, most are from the past 50 years. They reflect on a multitude of stages in the authors’ personal and professional lives. In 344 pages divided into twelve sections, including "Early Pioneers," "Life in the Trenches," and "Mothering and Doctoring," the 146 authors recount - in excerpts from published memoirs, previously published and unpublished essays, poems and other writings, many of them composed solely for this collection - what it was then and what it was in 2002 to be a woman becoming a doctor in the U.S.. All but a handful of the authors are physicians or surgeons. There is a heavy representation from institutions on both coasts, especially the Northeast. Four men were invited to reflect on being married to physician wives. There is one anonymous essay concerning sexual harassment and a final essay from a mother and daughter, both physicians.   Beginning with the first American female physicians in the mid-19th century, like historic ground-breakers Elizabeth Blackwell and Mary Putnam Jacobi, the anthology proceeds through the phases of medical school, residency, early and mid-careers, up to reflections from older physicians on a life spent in medicine. Many of the authors have names well known in the medical humanities, including Marcia Angell, Leon Eisenberg, Perri Klass, Danielle Ofri, Audrey Shafer, and Marjorie Spurrier Sirridge, to mention a few. 

The essays and poems and letters have, as a partial listing, the following subjects: family influences in becoming a physician; professional friendships; marriage; children and their impact on a woman’s career in medicine; the decision not to have children; ill family members; illness as a physician; establishing one's sexuality as a physician; struggles with male physicians and their egos; mentors, both female and male; memorable patients (often terminal or dying); the life of a wife-physician, or mother-physician; the guilt and sacrifice that accompany such a dual life; the importance - and easy loss - of personal time or what internist Catherine Chang calls “self-care” (page 334).   The anthology also touches on how women have changed the practice of medicine in various ways, prompted by the growing realization, as family practice physician Alison Moll puts it, "that I didn't have to practice in the traditional way" (page 185)  The authors write about the wisdom of setting limits; training or working part-time or sharing a position with another woman; and the constant face-off with decisions, especially those not normally confronting an American man becoming a doctor. 
One conclusion is evident before the reader is halfway through the book: there are many approaches to becoming a fulfilled female physician including finding one’s identity in the field.  Implicit in most of the essays and writings is the lament from obstetrician-gynecologist Gayle Shore Mayer: "Where is the self ? There are pieces of me everywhere", (page 275) recalling a similar cry from Virginia Woolf's Orlando, another essentially female soul trying to find what Richard Selzer has called "The Exact Location of the Soul".  Several authors discover that female physicians have unique gifts to offer their patients. As internist Rebekah Wang-Cheng writes, “I am a better physician because I am a mother, and I know because of my experiences as a physician that I am a better mother.” (page 151) 

There are sections at the end devoted to a glossary for the lay reader, resources for women (as of 2002), and generous notes about the contributors (which section also serves as a useful index of each's contributions).

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On a stormy night in 1968 a retired, widowed schoolteacher in rural Pennsylvania opens her door to find a young couple, she white, he African American, wrapped in blankets, drenched, and silent.  Letting them in changes her life.  They have escaped together from a nearby mental institution most locals simply call "The School."  The young woman has recently given birth.  When Martha lets them in, her life changes forever.   Supervisors from "the School" show up at the door, the young man escapes, and the young woman, memorably beautiful, is taken back into custody.  The only words she is able to speak out of what we learn has been a years-long silence are "Hide her."  Thus she leaves her newborn baby to be raised by a stranger.  The remaining chapters span more than forty years in the stories of these people, linked by fate and love and the brutalities of an unreformed system that incarcerated, neglected, and not infrequently abused people who were often misdiagnosed.  Homan, the young man who loved Lynnie, the beautiful girl from the institution, was deaf, not retarded.  Lynnie was simply "slow," but a gifted artist who recorded many of the events of her life in drawings she shared only with the one attendant who valued and loved her.  Though her pregnancy resulted from being raped by a staff member, the deaf man longs to protect her and care for the baby.  Years separate them; Homan eventually learns signing; Lynnie's sister befriends her and an exposé results in the closure of the institution.  Over those years Lynnie and Homan witness much cultural change in treatment of people like them who were once systematically excluded.  They find social identities that once would have been entirely unavailable to them.  And eventually, after literal and figurative journeys of discovery, they rediscover each other.   

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This film focuses on the interaction between 5-year-old Alexandria and Roy, a Hollywood stuntman in the early days of film.  The two are residents of a rehabilitation hospital, and both are recovering from falls they’ve taken: he’s paralyzed from the waist down as a result of a failed stunt; she’s broken her humerus as the result of a fall she’s taken in an orange orchard.  (A child in a migrant family, she’s been tasked, at 5 years of age—presumably out of economic necessity—with climbing ladders to pick oranges.)  Having accidentally intercepted an affectionate note—Alexandria’s child-missive—meant for the kindly but preoccupied nurse Evelyn, paralyzed Roy befriends the girl and quickly wins her over by telling her the wondrous tale of a masked bandit and his companions, all of whom have been betrayed by the evil emperor Odious, and all of whom are united in their quest for vengeance against the ruler.  While Roy narrates the story, we see it take place through Alexandria’s eyes, and the characters she envisions are drawn from people in her life.  The role of the heroic masked bandit she assigns to Roy himself, blended to a poignant degree with her deceased father.  Alexandria sometimes interrupts and asks questions about or challenges the story’s development, whereupon Roy makes adjustments: it’s clear that the story is a co-constructed project.  Roy has, however, become increasingly despondent over his paralyzed condition and over the fact that his fiancée has broken off the engagement as a result of Roy’s condition.  As time goes on, Roy uses his unfolding story as a means of manipulating Alexandria to retrieve morphine from the hospital dispensary.  He tries and fails to commit suicide with the pills that Alexandria supplies.  In the process, he winds up bringing about a severe injury to the child.  Filled with remorse and guilt, Roy alters his story such that it can be a source of separation between him and the girl: it becomes cruel and violent, and suggests that the hero is a weak, inglorious imposter who deserves to die.  The anguished Alexandria protests, demanding that Roy change the story.  Roy refuses, insisting that “It’s my story.”  But Alexandria retorts, “It’s mine, too.”  And Roy relents.  The masked bandit of the story is redeemed, and Roy himself is as well.  The film closes first with Roy, Alexandria, the hospital patients and staff watching the film in which Roy’s acting had led to his accident.  As the scene approaches the point where the accident had occurred, Roy feels understandable anxiety; but the film has of course been edited.  Roy is relieved, but turns to Alexandria, in the hopes that she is not terrified.  He finds her beaming.  Then the film we are watching, The Fall, shifts to a rapid series of black-and-white footage of stunts—the effect is reminiscent of the love scenes gathered at the end of Cinema Paradiso—narrated by the marveling Alexandria.  Each clip features a person in imminent, catastrophic danger—who is then impossibly rescued at the last second by fortunate chance.  As Alexandria blows us kisses through a character who is falling backward, we are left in a state of bewildered gratitude over this strange gift of stories we human beings offer each other—stories that assure us over and over again how, confronted with the calamities we see no way of escaping, we are nonetheless saved. 

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The Renewal of Generosity: Illness, Medicine, and How to Live contemplates the phenomenon of generosity as it is realized in the stories of physicians and patients.  For Arthur Frank, generosity is grounded in the willingness of people to give themselves over to dialogical processes of communication wherein participants best realize themselves through relational engagement: generous, dialogical communication leads to a renewal and realization of human being. Health care systems today tend to impede communicative generosity, however, and the result is a de-humanization and de-moralization of both physicians and patients.  As a remedy, Frank proposes, first, that we re-figure our conceptualization of the physician-patient relationship—from the economic or business metaphor of “provider” and “client,” we should turn to the metaphorical conceptualization of “host” and “guest,” which clearly has implications for manner of treatment and communication that occurs in the relationship.  In addition, Frank turns to and thinks with stories of physicians and stories of the ill to reflect on the ways that generosity is realized.  Drawing on the wisdom of the striking philosophical triumvirate of Marcus Aurelius (Stoicism), Mikhail Bakhtin (Dialogism), and Emmanuel Levinas  to amplify the reflections emerging from the physician and patient stories, Frank ultimately proposes “exercises” for training to generate a vivifying generosity within the medical profession, which can in turn lead to a re-humanization and re-moralization for physicians, improved care for patients, and enhanced flourishing for all.

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