Noon Time
Book Discussion
The Wilmington Library Presents...
Take Four and Call Me in
the Morning
Discussion Leader
Tom Leitch
Mondays at Noon |
We think of doctors as authority figures,
people who can listen to our account of our
symptoms, tell us what's wrong and make us
better. But these assumptions about the
power of medical practitioners are relatively
recent. Nineteenth century patients saw
doctors as kindly companions who could listen
sympathetically and nod sagely but were often
powerless to heal them. The belief that
diseases routinely yield to medical science has
less to do with the rising authority of
physicians than with the dramatic advances in
medicine: vaccinations against smallpox and
polio, anesthetics that allow surgeons to
operate, antibiotics that turn back all but the
most stubborn bacterial infections. Doctors know
well that not even the most powerful of these
treatments can treat every malady.
Please join us at noon four Mondays this spring
as we read accounts by four noted physicians of
their own failures, the shortcomings of the
medical establishment, the limits of the most
potent medicines in the hands of the most
eminent practitioners, and the lessons they draw
from them. The case studies we'll be
reading are guaranteed to make you think in new
ways about your doctor, your HMO, your insurance
company, and your own mortal body. |
Monday, 27 February
Sigmund Freud, Dora: An Analysis of a Case
of Hysteria
Call in the case even Freud
couldn't crack: The most riveting and the most
famous case study by the father of
psychoanalysis is an illuminating confession of
his own failure to cure the patient we know only
as Dora. |
Monday, 9 March
Oliver Sacks, An Anthropologist on Mars
In these "seven paradoxical
tales," the renowned neurologist looks at seven
"differently brained" people - from the painter
who has lost his ability to perceive colors to
the man whose memory thinks it is always 1968 -
in order to determine what their stories, which
focus on differences that might make them seem
as alien as Martians, can tell us about our own. |
Monday, 9 April
Jerome Groopman, How Doctors Think
"As many as 15 percent of all
diagnoses are inaccurate," announces Dr.
Groopman in introducing this study of
communications and miscommunications between
patients and their physicians. His study
of why even the very best doctors make so many
mistakes leads to urgent questions about what
can patients do, both as individuals and through
group activism, to insure that they get the best
possible medical care. |
Monday, 30 April
Atul Gawande, Better
These "surgeon's notes on
performance" focus on social and institutional
barriers to successful medical practice.
In examining the reasons why doctors don't wash
their hands more often, asking how they feel
about officiating at executions, and considering
which parties have the most at stake in medical
malpractice lawsuits, Gawande redefines the
place of modern medicine in revealing, often
disturbing, ways. |
Sponsored by the Friends of the Wilmington
Library
571-7407 |
