Do No Harm (book): Difference between revisions
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The first chapter begins with Henry describing his feeling of open a brain "...feeling my way downwards through the soft white substance of the brain. The idea that my sucker is moving through thought itself, through emotion and reason, that memories, dreams, and reflections should consist of jelly, is simply too strange to understand."<ref>{{cite book |last=Marsh |first=Henry |title=Do No Harm: Stories of life, death, and brain surgery |date=2014 |page=1}}</ref> This is when Marsh introduces his first patient of the book, a high-powered company director, who suffers from headaches in the middle of the night, caused by stress after the [[Financial crisis of 2007–2008|financial crash of 2008]]. Marsh spent an hour and a half in order to reach the tumour, removing a minute fragment and sending it to the [[Medical laboratory|pathology laboratory]]. The results came back as a benign [[Pineocytoma]] (an uncommon, slow-growing tumour of the [[Pineal gland|pineal gland]]). This tumour was not stuck to the brain, so Marsh slowly cored it out. In this personal and subjective book, we discover a doctor completely dedicated to [[neurosurgery]] who has learned to live with the transcendence of his actions. He is critical about the health system, grumbles with the directors and politicians who run the health service, and longs for another time in which the implication and time of the doctor were much greater than at present: "...the country's massively in debt financially, why not have a massive debt of medical experience as well? Let's have a whole new generation of ignorant doctors in the future."<ref>{{cite book |last=Marsh |first=Henry |title=Do No Harm: Stories of life, death, and brain surgery |date=2014 |page=175}}</ref> |
The first chapter begins with Henry describing his feeling of open a brain "...feeling my way downwards through the soft white substance of the brain. The idea that my sucker is moving through thought itself, through emotion and reason, that memories, dreams, and reflections should consist of jelly, is simply too strange to understand."<ref>{{cite book |last=Marsh |first=Henry |title=Do No Harm: Stories of life, death, and brain surgery |date=2014 |page=1}}</ref> This is when Marsh introduces his first patient of the book, a high-powered company director, who suffers from headaches in the middle of the night, caused by stress after the [[Financial crisis of 2007–2008|financial crash of 2008]]. Marsh spent an hour and a half in order to reach the tumour, removing a minute fragment and sending it to the [[Medical laboratory|pathology laboratory]]. The results came back as a benign [[Pineocytoma]] (an uncommon, slow-growing tumour of the [[Pineal gland|pineal gland]]). This tumour was not stuck to the brain, so Marsh slowly cored it out. In this personal and subjective book, we discover a doctor completely dedicated to [[neurosurgery]] who has learned to live with the transcendence of his actions. He is critical about the health system, grumbles with the directors and politicians who run the health service, and longs for another time in which the implication and time of the doctor were much greater than at present: "...the country's massively in debt financially, why not have a massive debt of medical experience as well? Let's have a whole new generation of ignorant doctors in the future."<ref>{{cite book |last=Marsh |first=Henry |title=Do No Harm: Stories of life, death, and brain surgery |date=2014 |page=175}}</ref> |
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In the book, the reader can also find personal information about |
In the book, the reader can also find personal information about Marsh. He describes how he usually goes to work on a bike to relax, he practices beekeeping as a hobby. He tells how he strives to control the panic that invades him in some complicated intervention, not only is it to operate, he must also radiate calm and confidence in himself as a surgeon even in situations in which he does not feel it. Marsh also tells us how his career in medicine began, mostly in chapter 4. He starts this chapter by talking about his non-medical or scientific background. His father was a human right lawyer, and his mother a German refugee from [[Nazi Germany]], who would probably have been a [[philologist]] if she hadn't refused to join the women's branch of the Hitler Youth. Marsh finished a bachelor in letters and spent two years without studying, worked in the National Archive, spent a year in Africa teaching as a volunteer and then enrolled in [[Oxford]] in Politics, Economics, and Philosophy. After a life crisis, he ended up being a stretcher-bearer in a hospital and realized that he was interested in Medicine: "I found its controlled and altruistic violence deeply appealing. It seemed to involve excitement and job security, a combination of manual and mental skills, and power and social status as well."<ref>{{cite book |last=Marsh |first=Henry |title=Do No Harm: Stories of life, death, and brain surgery |date=2014 |page=76}}</ref> He decided to study medicine, but because he didn't have O-levels or A-levels in science, he was rejected by all the London Medical Schools. One day, he was telephoned by the [[UCL Medical School|Royal Free Medical School]]. He remembers how on the interview day he receives a piece of advice that he never forgo:t "... it was best to see medicine as a form of craft, neither art nor science..." <ref>{{cite book |last=Marsh |first=Henry |title=Do No Harm: Stories of life, death, and brain surgery |date=2014 |page=77}}</ref> After medical school, he managed to get a job on a surgical firm, in his teaching hospital. |
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''Do No Harm'' shows us a doctor who is capable of laughing at himself with 30 years of perspective, because at the beginning of his profession he felt so important and, and know he says, the humility he acquired over time: "It had been easy then to feel sympathy for patients because I was not responsible for what happened to them. But with responsibility comes the fear of failure, and patients become a source of anxiety and stress as well as occasional pride in success." <ref>{{cite book |last=Marsh |first=Henry |title=Do No Harm: Stories of life, death, and brain surgery |date=2014 |page=83}}</ref> In maturity, it is when he ends up accepting [[failure]] as another part of his work because the difficulties have to do mainly with the decision making and the speed with which they must be taken. |
''Do No Harm'' shows us a doctor who is capable of laughing at himself with 30 years of perspective, because at the beginning of his profession he felt so important and, and know he says, the humility he acquired over time: "It had been easy then to feel sympathy for patients because I was not responsible for what happened to them. But with responsibility comes the fear of failure, and patients become a source of anxiety and stress as well as occasional pride in success." <ref>{{cite book |last=Marsh |first=Henry |title=Do No Harm: Stories of life, death, and brain surgery |date=2014 |page=83}}</ref> In maturity, it is when he ends up accepting [[failure]] as another part of his work because the difficulties have to do mainly with the decision making and the speed with which they must be taken. Ethical dilemmas are also discussed; for example, when he sees himself in the position of having to operate on a 96-year-old woman who has been living independently, but prefers to die at home without being operated on. In Chapter 8, Marsh receives a phone call from his wife Hilary, who lets him know that their three-month-old son William had been admitted the local hospital, with some kind of problem in his brain. William had a tumor removed five days that ended being benign[[Choroid plexus papilloma|choroid plexus papilloma]] (a benign tumour of the choroid plexus, a structure made from tufts of villi within the ventricular system that produces cerebrospinal fluid). Marsh experienced the anguish that parents endure when their children are patients: "Anxious and angry relatives are a burden all doctors must bear, but having been one myself was an important part of my medical education. Doctors, I tell my trainees with a laugh, can't suffer enough."<ref>{{cite book |last=Marsh |first=Henry |title=Do No Harm: Stories of life, death, and brain surgery |date=2014 |page=110}}</ref> |
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== Critical reception == |
== Critical reception == |
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Revision as of 06:47, 9 August 2019
 | This article may require copy editing for tone, style, language. (May 2019) |
 | This article may be written from a fan's point of view, rather than a neutral point of view. (May 2019) |
| Author | Henry Marsh |
|---|---|
| Genre | Biography / Science / Medicine |
| Publisher | Weidenfeld & Nicolson |
Publication date | 9 October 2014 |
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
| Media type | Print (hardcover) |
| Pages | 291 |
| ISBN | 978-1-250-09013-3 |
Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death, and Brain Surgery is a 2014 memoir written by Henry Marsh and published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson. The book details parts of the author's career as a neurosurgeon.
Plot
 | This article's plot summary may be too long or excessively detailed. (April 2019) |
Do No Harm begins with a quote of René Leriche from La philosophie de la chirurgie (1951): "Every surgeon carries within himself a small cemetery, where from time to time he goes to pray... a place of bitterness and regret, where he must look for an explanation for his failures." Neurosurgeon Dr. Marsh reveals he was interviewed by the script-writing team for the TV medical drama Holby City, who were looking for positive stories.
His patient, Melanie, was a 28-year-old pregnant woman going blind. The brain scan showed a Meningioma at the base of her brain. The tumour posed no risk to the unborn child but Marsh had to remove it quickly. Later that same day he lost another patient. Marsh also writes descriptively, making medical jargon accessible and using technical medical terms to title each chapter.
The first chapter begins with Henry describing his feeling of open a brain "...feeling my way downwards through the soft white substance of the brain. The idea that my sucker is moving through thought itself, through emotion and reason, that memories, dreams, and reflections should consist of jelly, is simply too strange to understand."[1] This is when Marsh introduces his first patient of the book, a high-powered company director, who suffers from headaches in the middle of the night, caused by stress after the financial crash of 2008. Marsh spent an hour and a half in order to reach the tumour, removing a minute fragment and sending it to the pathology laboratory. The results came back as a benign Pineocytoma (an uncommon, slow-growing tumour of the pineal gland). This tumour was not stuck to the brain, so Marsh slowly cored it out. In this personal and subjective book, we discover a doctor completely dedicated to neurosurgery who has learned to live with the transcendence of his actions. He is critical about the health system, grumbles with the directors and politicians who run the health service, and longs for another time in which the implication and time of the doctor were much greater than at present: "...the country's massively in debt financially, why not have a massive debt of medical experience as well? Let's have a whole new generation of ignorant doctors in the future."[2]
In the book, the reader can also find personal information about Marsh. He describes how he usually goes to work on a bike to relax, he practices beekeeping as a hobby. He tells how he strives to control the panic that invades him in some complicated intervention, not only is it to operate, he must also radiate calm and confidence in himself as a surgeon even in situations in which he does not feel it. Marsh also tells us how his career in medicine began, mostly in chapter 4. He starts this chapter by talking about his non-medical or scientific background. His father was a human right lawyer, and his mother a German refugee from Nazi Germany, who would probably have been a philologist if she hadn't refused to join the women's branch of the Hitler Youth. Marsh finished a bachelor in letters and spent two years without studying, worked in the National Archive, spent a year in Africa teaching as a volunteer and then enrolled in Oxford in Politics, Economics, and Philosophy. After a life crisis, he ended up being a stretcher-bearer in a hospital and realized that he was interested in Medicine: "I found its controlled and altruistic violence deeply appealing. It seemed to involve excitement and job security, a combination of manual and mental skills, and power and social status as well."[3] He decided to study medicine, but because he didn't have O-levels or A-levels in science, he was rejected by all the London Medical Schools. One day, he was telephoned by the Royal Free Medical School. He remembers how on the interview day he receives a piece of advice that he never forgo:t "... it was best to see medicine as a form of craft, neither art nor science..." [4] After medical school, he managed to get a job on a surgical firm, in his teaching hospital.
Do No Harm shows us a doctor who is capable of laughing at himself with 30 years of perspective, because at the beginning of his profession he felt so important and, and know he says, the humility he acquired over time: "It had been easy then to feel sympathy for patients because I was not responsible for what happened to them. But with responsibility comes the fear of failure, and patients become a source of anxiety and stress as well as occasional pride in success." [5] In maturity, it is when he ends up accepting failure as another part of his work because the difficulties have to do mainly with the decision making and the speed with which they must be taken. Ethical dilemmas are also discussed; for example, when he sees himself in the position of having to operate on a 96-year-old woman who has been living independently, but prefers to die at home without being operated on. In Chapter 8, Marsh receives a phone call from his wife Hilary, who lets him know that their three-month-old son William had been admitted the local hospital, with some kind of problem in his brain. William had a tumor removed five days that ended being benignchoroid plexus papilloma (a benign tumour of the choroid plexus, a structure made from tufts of villi within the ventricular system that produces cerebrospinal fluid). Marsh experienced the anguish that parents endure when their children are patients: "Anxious and angry relatives are a burden all doctors must bear, but having been one myself was an important part of my medical education. Doctors, I tell my trainees with a laugh, can't suffer enough."[6]
Critical reception
Critical reception has been positive.[7][8] Karl Ove Knausgård has praised the book, stating that the work has "true honesty in an unexpected place".[9] The work has also received praise from The Observer and The Daily Telegraph, the latter of which had Nicholas Blincoe calling it "an elegant series of meditations at the closing of a long career".[10][11] Michiko Kakutani was also favorable, writing that while the book "may unsettle readers" it would "at the same time leave them with a searing appreciation of the wonders of the human body, and gratitude that there are surgeons like Henry Marsh using their hard-won expertise to save and repair lives." [12]
Awards
- 2015 Winner of the PEN Ackerley Prize [13]
- A Finalist for the Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize
- 2015 Finalist for the Wellcome Book Prize [14]
- A Financial Times Best Business Book of the Year [15]
- An Economist Best Book of the Year
- 2015 Washington Post Notable Book of the Year [16]
- A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
References
- ^ Marsh, Henry (2014). Do No Harm: Stories of life, death, and brain surgery. p. 1.
- ^ Marsh, Henry (2014). Do No Harm: Stories of life, death, and brain surgery. p. 175.
- ^ Marsh, Henry (2014). Do No Harm: Stories of life, death, and brain surgery. p. 76.
- ^ Marsh, Henry (2014). Do No Harm: Stories of life, death, and brain surgery. p. 77.
- ^ Marsh, Henry (2014). Do No Harm: Stories of life, death, and brain surgery. p. 83.
- ^ Marsh, Henry (2014). Do No Harm: Stories of life, death, and brain surgery. p. 110.
- ^ "Do No Harm by Henry Marsh". The Times.
- ^ "Anatomy of Error". The New Yorker.
- ^ "The FT's Summer books 2014". Financial Times.
- ^ "Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery review – 'a bloody, splendid book'". The Guardian.
- ^ "Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death, and Brain Surgery review". The Telegraph.
- ^ "Review: In 'Do No Harm,' a Brain Surgeon Tells All". The New York Times.
- ^ "PEN Ackerley Prize". English Pen.
- ^ "Do No Harm". Wellcome bookprize.
- ^ "Best business books". Financial Times.
- ^ "Notable nonfiction of 2015". The Washington Post.