Author: Danielle Ofri Surgeons more than physicians and physicians more than nurses are convinced that surgery or prescription is the only way to heal; everything else is talking. After all, in universities, it is taught that only technical skills count. We prepare students to read a CT scan, interpret an ECG, and evaluate a set…
Category: Book Reviews
We have read the Slow Medicine books that matter most and share our thoughts in these reviews.
When Breath Becomes Air
Author: Paul Kalanithi “Science may be the most effective way to organize empirical and reproducible data, but this power of its springs from the inability to grasp the fundamental aspects of human life: Hope, Fear, Love, Hate, Beauty, Envy, Honor, Weakness, Commitment, Suffering, Virtue”. Paul Kalanithi was a neurosurgeon who comes to these reflections, not…
God’s Hotel
Author: Victoria Sweet Victoria Sweet recounts the years she worked as a physician at Laguna Honda Hospital in San Francisco, California, a large hospital for the chronically ill, the last functioning almhouse in the United States. The tradition of the Almhouses was to give shelter to the poor, to the old, to people who had…
The Art of Dying Well
Author: Katy Butler Dying. The verb itself is capable of causing fear and anxiety. To glimpse our termination (or that of someone we love), even if only at a glance, can be so distressing as to make us ignore the only certainty we all have in our lives: that it will end. We are not…
My Mother, Your Mother
Author: Dennis McCullough, MD This is a small piece of art, a book that every geriatrician should read. The book talks about the last years of life and how people can prepare for them to be lived peacefully and satisfyingly, both the elderly person and his or her family. Slow Medicine’s strategy of care is…