This book is divided into three
parts: fallibility, mystery and uncertainty, aspects of life we are unused to
hearing discussed in the medical world. Atul Gawande illustrates, explores and
makes come alive this world, in language which is clear and engaging.

  He takes the reader on a journey
through some common and not-so-common conditions and situations. The chapters
in the first part range over the need for humility, the recognition that
mistakes are made in medicine and what to do about them, and the handling of
doctors who should no longer practise.

  For example, the Shouldice Hospital
outside Toronto does nothing but hernia operations and their recurrence rate is
one percent, but the doctors do not get bored because ‘[p]erfection is the
excitement’. Gawande presents to the reader the disturbing idea that maybe
certain surgical procedures don’t need to be performed by human beings, but
could very successfully be done by machines. He then ends the chapter thus:
‘Maybe machines can decide, but we still need doctors to heal.’

  The second part contains
chapters on pain, nausea, blushing and overeating. The author ponders the
difficulty of treating chronic pain adequately, stating that ‘the solution to
chronic pain may lie more in what goes on around us than in what is going on
inside us’, and stresses the reality of the pain to the sufferer, whatever the
cause.

  In all of these stories, Gawande
shows himself to be mindful of the patient as a whole person. The chapter about
the woman who has uncontrollable, severe blushing that threatens her career as
a television newsreader reveals the complexity of a seemingly simple problem.
It is one friend’s cruel comment that almost undoes her after she has had
successful surgery to correct the problem. There is no surgical remedy that can
prevent such unkindness.

  The difficulties of obesity and
its treatment in the morbid cases is sensitively and imaginatively presented.

  The third part takes the reader
into the world of the autopsy, particularly when and how and why it is
requested, and how difficult it can be to approach grieving relatives with such
a request. He touches upon sudden infant death syndrome, and this is probably
the only weak chapter in the book. It is much too short to deal adequately with
this subject, and as such only gives the reader the story of a sensational and
rare case where a woman killed eight of her ten babies.

  The chapter ‘Whose Body Is It
Anyway?’ is as profound and thorough as the previous is not. Gawande takes the
reader through case histories which demonstrate the points he wants to make,
and the difficulties there are in negotiating good practice with patient
autonomy and informed decision-making.

  He ends with a rare condition,
but a fascinating one. It illustrates the concept of intuition and how it can
work spectacularly well, but how it can also be problematic. He shows the
reader how going only by a logical reasoned approach such as ‘decision
analysis’ would have led to a totally different outcome for the young female
patient.

  This is a readable,
well-written, compassionate, thoughtful book, written clearly and without
jargon, and of interest and importance to both the medical and non-medical
reader.

© 2004 Sue Bond