Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death, and Brain Surgery
Genres: Medical
Book Preface
Throughout my career I have been fortunate to work with colleagues from America—mainly neurosurgical residents who come to work for one year in my department in London as part of their training. I have learned much from them and as with many Brits who have worked with Americans I love their optimism, their faith that any problem can be solved if enough hard work and money is thrown at it, and the way in which success is admired and respected and not a cause for jealousy. This is a refreshing contrast to the weary and knowing skepticism of the English. Yet when I visit American hospitals and see the extremes to which treatment can sometimes be pushed, I wonder whether the doctors and patients there have yet to understand that the famous dictum that in America death is optional, was meant as a joke.
I have also worked in countries such as Ukraine and Sudan that have very impoverished health care systems compared to America. You realize quite quickly, however, that despite the very great differences in equipment and technology many things are the same. Our vulnerability and fear of death when we are patients know no national boundaries, and the need for honesty and kindness from doctors—and the difficulty at times in giving these—is equally universal. I would hope that my many American trainees have come to understand this by working in the foreign country that is England, just as I have done with my work abroad.
Doctors will sometimes admit their mistakes and “complications” to each other but are reluctant to do so in public, especially in countries that have commercial, competitive healthcare systems. This book is as much about failure as success, but it is not intended as a confession and instead is an attempt to give an honest account of what it is like to be a neurosurgeon. My readiness to admit to my fallibility is perhaps rather English, but I hope that the problems I describe will be familiar to doctors and patients everywhere. The book is also the story of an all-encompassing love affair, and an explanation of why it is such a privilege—although a very painful one—to be a neurosurgeon.
—Henry Marsh, August 2014
Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Epigraph
Preface
1. Pineocytoma
2. Aneurysm
3. Haemangioblastoma
4. Melodrama
5. Tic douloureux
6. Angor animi
7. Meningioma
8. Choroid plexus papilloma
9. Leucotomy
10. Trauma
11. Ependymoma
12. Glioblastoma
13. Infarct
14. Neurotmesis
15. Medulloblastoma
16. Pituitary adenoma
17. Empyema
18. Carcinoma
19. Akinetic mutism
20. Hubris
21. Photopsia
22. Astrocytoma
23. Tyrosine kinase
24. Oligodendroglioma
25. Anaesthesia dolorosa
Acknowledgements
Copyright
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