Summary:

From a fishing trip the local doctor is summoned to an Indian village to assist a woman in labor. With him are his young son and an older male relative. The physician assesses the situation in the closed, pungent hut and determines that his only option is section--with a pen knife and fishing leader as his instruments, and no anesthesia for the Indian woman. The doctor arrogantly, but only briefly, celebrates his success as a surgeon only to discover that the woman's husband, apparently unable to tolerate his wife's pain and the racism of the white visitors, has silently slit his own throat. The child, who has observed the entire proceedings asks, "Is dying hard, Daddy?"

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Dr. Conley became, in 1991, the center of media attention when she publicly declared her reasons for resigning her position as Professor of Neurosurgery at Stanford University: a hostile work environment due to the sexism of the male professor promoted first to acting chair, then chair of her department. This book is her story, but as she notes in the introduction, it is "one of many that could be told by women doctors across the country, about this institution [Stanford University] and many others like it."

Dr. Conley has been a remarkable pioneer in academic medicine: in 1975, she became the first female faculty member at Stanford in any surgical department. She was immediately elected the first female chair of the faculty Senate. She has led an active, innovative research team investigating the immunology of brain tumors. She is the first female tenured professor of neurosurgery in the country.

The book offers behind-the-scenes views of the anatomy lab and medical school, residency and sleep deprivation, the operating room and hospital medicine, and, above all, the political parrying and power struggles in academic medicine, particularly in the dean's office. In a bold move, Conley uses the real names of top administrators and those who had previously been identified in the media--not only concerning her issues, but also those involved with scandals that were unfolding concurrently in other departments.

Because of the circumstances surrounding her resignation and subsequent rescindment of the resignation, she became aware of many instances of sexism, gender discrimination and harassment, not only in academia, but throughout hospital and research environments. Her current position within the University and Veterans Affairs hospital enables her to be a strong voice for women's issues. This book chronicles her personal journey and acknowledges the support of her husband, parents, mentors, and friends along the way.

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Veneta Masson’s wonderful collection contains 56 "entries," essays, poems, fragments, and articles about her work as a nurse in an inner-city clinic. Her story is offered not as a neat beginning to end narrative, but as a pastiche of observations that range from commentary on how doctors and nurses approach caregiving, to a poem about Maggie Jones, a patient who changed Masson’s life.

As she follows the growth of the clinic and muses about the professionals and patients who give it life, Masson also talks about nursing: how it was, how it is, and why it’s such an important, and sometimes difficult to define, vocation. Some entries were contributed by Masson’s colleagues, Jim Hall, Teresa Acquaviva, Sharon Baskerville and Katrina Gibbons, but the best are Masson’s own.

This book should be required reading for nursing students, especially entries, "Nurses and Doctors as Healers," A Case for Doctoring Nursing," "Pushing the Outside of the Envelope," "If New Graduates Went to the Community First," "A Good Nurse," "Nursing the Charts," "Tools of the Trade," "Bring Back Big Nurse," "A Ready Answer," "Mindset," "Seven Keys to Nursing," and "Prescriptive Ambivalence." This book, especially for the essays "Nurses and Doctors as Healers," "A Case for Doctoring Nursing," "Prescriptive Ambivalence," and "If New Graduates Went to the Community First," should also be slipped into every medical student’s pocket.

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This film tells the remarkable story of Vivien Thomas (played by Mos Def), an African-American fine carpenter, who found his way into medicine through the back door and changed medical history. Hired when jobs were in short supply to work as a custodian and sometime lab assistant to Dr. Alfred Blalock (Alan Rickman), a research cardiologist, Thomas quickly becomes an irreplaceable research assistant. His keen observations, his skill with the most delicate machinery and, eventually, in performing experimental surgery on animals, make clear that he has both a genius and a calling.

Though the relationship has its tensions (Blalock, as a Southern white man and a doctor, has some blind spots in the matter of mutual human respect, though he highly values Thomas’s skills) it lasts for decades. The two move their families to Baltimore, where Blalock becomes Head of Surgery at Johns Hopkins and, much to his colleagues surprise and to some of their dismay, brings Thomas in to perform groundbreaking open heart surgery on a blue baby. It is not until after Blalock’s death that Thomas is granted an honorary doctorate from Johns Hopkins, where he continues to work in research until his own retirement.

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This novel is narrated by Katie Carr, who very much wants to be a good person.  She is a physician and a mother of two, and lives with her petulant husband, David.  David is the author of a column in the local newspaper called "Angriest Man in Holloway".  As their marriage falls apart, David undergoes a conversion at the hands of GoodNews, a young guru, and ceases to be sarcastic and angry, embarking instead on an effort to improve the world with acts of kindness.  Katie is forced to consider what it means to be a good person and how that affects whether to salvage her marriage, how to raise her children and how to be the type of physician she always considered herself to be.

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The young pathologist David Coleman (Ben Gazzara) arrives to join a hospital pathology lab. He encounters disorganization and a hostile, cigar-smoking chief, Joe Pearson (Frederic March), who declares his intention to keep working until he dies. Coleman tries to implement a few changes, but his suggestions are overruled.

The film revolves around two cases: possible erythroblastosis in the child of an intern and his wife whose first child died; possible bone cancer in Coleman's girlfriend, student nurse Kathy Hunt (Ina Balin). The infant's problem is misdiagnosed due to Pearson's refusal to order the new Coombs' test recommended by Coleman; the baby nearly dies, alienating the obstetrician (Eddie Albert), a long time friend who now presses for Pearson's dismissal.

Coleman disagrees with Pearson, who thinks that Kathy's bone tumor is malignant, but he opts for professional discretion, defers to the chief, and urges her to have her leg amputated anyway. He discovers that Pearson had been right: the surgery, which he thought unnecessary, has provided her with her only chance of survival. Just as Coleman realizes the enormity of his error, he learns that Pearson has resigned and that he will take over the lab.

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The author lists 173 twentieth century physician-writers, including both well-known and relatively obscure figures. The roster features each author’s dates, nationality, gender, year of medical degree, medical specialty, and his or her literary genre (fiction, poetry, drama, and non-fiction). The information about each author is documented by a reference to source material. The article also contains tables indicating (1) the percentage of physicians in the United States who were published physician-writers by decade from 1930 to the present; (2) a breakdown of physician-writers by medical specialty; and (3) literary genres by medical specialty.

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Aurelio Escovar is introduced as a poor dentist without a degree. He is busy polishing false teeth early one morning when the mayor arrives to see him. At first he refuses to see this would-be patient, until the mayor, who has been suffering severe toothache for five days and is desperate, threatens to shoot him. Eventually the dentist lets him in, examines him, and then removes the infected wisdom tooth, without anesthesia.

We realize that the dentist has deliberately made the mayor suffer all this time, and he gives the reason as he pulls out the tooth, saying "Now you’ll pay for our twenty dead men." When the mayor has recovered and wiped his tears, he leaves, telling the dentist to send the bill. When Escovar asks whether to send the bill "To you or the town?," the mayor replies, "It’s the same damn thing."

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In 1996, at the age of 31, David Biro is preparing for his specialty examinations in dermatology and is set to share a practice with his father. But he develops a visual disturbance. After repeated testing, he is found to have the rare blood disorder of paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria. The diagnosis was problematic, but the treatment choices are overwhelming. His youngest sister is a suitable donor, and he opts for a bone marrow transplant. He realizes that his decision was influenced not only by the diagnosis, but also by his personality and his reaction to the physicians.

Advance preparations are hectic and sometimes comic, especially his deposits at a local sperm bank. The pain of the transplant and the six weeks imprisonment in a small hospital room are told in graphic detail. The athletically inclined doctor suffers many complications: exquisitely painful ulcers of the scrotum, mouth, and esophagus; inflammation of the liver; unexplained fever; drug-induced delirium; weakness and weight loss.

His parents, sisters and friends leap into action to provide round-the-clock presence, but his independent wife, Daniella, resents the invasion. While David’s body is wracked with drugs and radiation, his family and his marriage are subjected to destructive forces too. Yet all--body, family, and marriage--emerge intact, though changed, by their experience.

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Middlemarch is a middle-sized country town typical of rural British life in the early nineteenth century. George Eliot (born Mary Ann Evans) was part of the realist school that dominated Victorian literature. She tried to create a true representation of the real, historical lives of ordinary people.

The novel has a vast number of characters and events but most of the plot centers on two couples: Dorothea and Casaubon (later Will Ladislaw) and Rosamond and Lydgate. Dorothea is an intelligent, vigorous woman, eager to improve the lives of her friends and the poor. She is determined not to marry any of the local, mindless squires but to devote herself to godly work.

Soon, however, she is introduced to Casaubon. Casaubon is an aging, ugly scholar, but Dorothea is attracted by his learning and agrees to marry him in hopes of helping him in his work. Their marriage is unhappy and cold. It is contrasted to Dorothea’s growing relationship with Will Ladislaw, a distant relative of Casaubon. Where Casaubon is cold, Will is passionate. Casaubon senses the kinship between his wife and Will and adds a codicil to his will insisting that if Dorothea and Will marry after his death than Dorothea must give up Casaubon’s house and money.

Shortly thereafter, Casaubon does die, and Dorothea is outraged upon hearing of the codicil. She does not recognize her feelings towards Will as feelings of love. By the end of the novel, however, the two confess their feelings and Dorothea gives up her earthly possesssions to live happily.

The plot developed around Lydgate and Rosamond is of particular medical interest. Lydgate is a new kind of medical practitioner. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the traditional medical order, consisting of physicians (like modern consultants), surgeons, and apothecaries, was being replaced. New well-schooled general practitioners could perform all these functions.

When Lydgate arrives in Middlemarch with his modern techniques and visions of building a modern hospital for the poor, the medical establishment greet him with jealousy and suspicion. Lydgate’s practice therefore develops very slowly. His marriage to Rosamond, a woman used to a rich lifestyle, quickly depletes his savings.

Facing bankruptcy and the loss of his disappointed wife, Lydgate receives an unexpected loan from Bulstrode, a wealthy landowner. Soon after, Bulstrode is charged with murder and Lydgate is accused of having a hand in it; Middlemarch sees the loan as a payoff. Disgraced, Lydgate cannot fight back. He becomes a doctor who toadies to the wealthy and abandons his revolutionary dreams. He dies at 50.

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