Saving The Art Of Medicine

In his deeply thoughtful book, Dr. Sussman provides an expansive view of the field and all that being a healer entails. Sharing stories from his training as well as practice, drawing on data from a wealth of studies, and including a nuanced discussion of clinical trials, he argues that medicine should be more than just the treatment of a diseased or broken body part. Rather, physicians must respect the complex interrelationships of mind, body, and spirit, seeking always to connect the part to the whole. Saving the Art of Medicine starts with the history of medicine in shamanic times and culminates in a discussion of how a doctor heals even at the time of death. It delves into a multitude of phenomena, such as nonpharmacological pathways to health, the doctor-patient connection, and the power of our minds. Comprehensive and multi-faceted, the book is a profound acknowledgment of the art of medicine and unveils an extraordinary potential within the field. Underpinning all is the idea that open mindedness, humility, and compassion play an integral role. Only by cultivating these virtues, can doctors achieve the highest levels of well-being for their patients and meet their own full potential as healers. Dr. Sussman’s journey and his inspiring vision of medicine as a combined science and art make this a must-read for medical students, doctors, and anyone interested in improving their own medical care and the healthcare system at large.

A renowned diagnostician shares stories of his patients and explores the importance of the human factor in medicine. In The Art of Medicine, Toronto Western Hospital’s internist Dr. Herbert Ho Ping Kong draws on his vast dossier of personal cases and five decades as a clinician to examine the core principles of a patient-centered approach to diagnosis and treatment. While HPK, as he is fondly known, recognizes and applauds the many invaluable innovations in medical technology, he makes the point that as disease and its management grow increasingly complex, physicians must learn to develop an arsenal of more basic skills, actively using the arts of seeing, hearing, palpation, empathy, and advocacy to provide a more humane and holistic form of care. Aimed at medical practitioners, aspiring doctors, or anyone interested in health and medicine, this book also contains interviews with more than a dozen of HPK’s patients, as well as short essays that explore the thinking of his professional colleagues on the art of medicine.

Employing the logical tools of contemporary analytic philosophy, this book places the pseudo-Hippocratic treatise On the Art of Medicine in its proper philosophical, rhetorical, and medical contexts through a new translation and commentary on the Greek text.

"A doctor should be a clown at heart, a scientist at brain and a mother at conscience." Abhijit Naskar - this is not just a name - it's an idea - an idea of self-realization - an idea of a healthy humanity - an idea of one humanity. And that idea rises through this book once again to extend the flow of practical philosophy of life to all practitioners of medicine. This is a humanitarian guidebook of the true philosophy, ethics and purpose of medical practice for all doctors and would-be doctors to understand themselves and their patients better. Naskar, the humanitarian neuroscientist lends a hand to the bold and life-saving individuals known as doctors in their practice of medicine, so that they could, in the truest sense of the term "save lives" and not just treat sick bodies.