The treatment of medical illness today depends much more on science and technology than on the physician's ability to listen, comfort, and prescribe. Medicine is not only increasingly technical but is also increasingly involved with legal, governmental, and insurance constraints on patient care, and this state of affairs has done much to distance physicians from their patients. This important book seeks to restore empathy to medical practice, to demonstrate how important it is for doctors to listen to their patients, to experience and understand what their patients are feeling. The book-a...

We have learned a great deal in recent years about keeping death at bay through medical technology. We are less well informed, however, about how to face death and how to understand or articulate the emotional and spiritual needs of the dying. This profound and eloquent book brings together medical experts and distinguished authorities in the humanities to reflect on medical, cultural, and religious responses to death. The book helps both medical personnel and patients to view death less as an adversary and more as a defining part of life. In the first half of the book, physicians and the...

"Our intent was to provide a book that would let the everyday practitioner understand that he or she had stories to tell, roads to walk, pictures to paint, tunes to play--and that there is life outside, even after, medicine."--from the preface
This book examines the lives of twenty-seven physicians--twenty-one men and six women--who have combined the aim to heal with other pursuits such as art, writing, music, or politics. Their fascinating testimonies illustrate the personal gratification and inspiration that can be gained from integrating medicine with another passionately engaging...