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A review by sumatra_squall
Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery by Henry Marsh
3.0
I love books on doctors and medicine. (I also love TV shows on doctors and medicine). Maybe it's the intellectual aspect of the work - trying to diagnose the problem and to treat it. Maybe it's the drama. Maybe there's an element of wistfulness that this could have been something I could have pursued (had I the stamina to handle the training, the courage and resilience to deal with death and suffering on a daily basis and the ability to juggle this with the demands and responsibilities of life outside of work). Do No Harm, Marsh's frank account of his experiences as a brain surgeon, his "attempts, and occasional failures, to find a balance between the necessary detachment and compassion that a surgical career requires, a balance between hope and realism".
I enjoyed reading this book, like I do most books on doctoring. I suspect that under regular circumstances, I would have rated this a four star read. But coming after Atul Gawande's Being Mortal and Judy Melinek's Working Stiff, which I'd read earlier this year, Do No Harm fell just a little shy of the bar set by those two books (for very different reasons). Gawande's a much more reflective writer than Marsh and he writes not only about his own experiences, but reflects on the state of the system and what might need to change. Marsh is a bit more of a straightforward storyteller - he'll tell you about the lessons and insights that he's gleaned over the years, but he'll also recount the rage, the irritation, the peevishness he's displayed and he's not above the occasional snide remark about the NHS. Melinek's book is also a straightforward storytelling piece and I thought it was more engaging in terms of material (might be influenced by my obsession with Bones here) and pacing.
Bonus nugget reading this book - realised that Henry Marsh is married to Kate Fox, the social anthropologist who wrote Watching the English.
I enjoyed reading this book, like I do most books on doctoring. I suspect that under regular circumstances, I would have rated this a four star read. But coming after Atul Gawande's Being Mortal and Judy Melinek's Working Stiff, which I'd read earlier this year, Do No Harm fell just a little shy of the bar set by those two books (for very different reasons). Gawande's a much more reflective writer than Marsh and he writes not only about his own experiences, but reflects on the state of the system and what might need to change. Marsh is a bit more of a straightforward storyteller - he'll tell you about the lessons and insights that he's gleaned over the years, but he'll also recount the rage, the irritation, the peevishness he's displayed and he's not above the occasional snide remark about the NHS. Melinek's book is also a straightforward storytelling piece and I thought it was more engaging in terms of material (might be influenced by my obsession with Bones here) and pacing.
Bonus nugget reading this book - realised that Henry Marsh is married to Kate Fox, the social anthropologist who wrote Watching the English.