Five Patients
by Michael Crichton
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Book Summary Information
Author: Michael CrichtonEdition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1989-01-13
ISBN: 0345354648
Number of pages: 272
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Accessories:
- Airborne Effervescent Health Formula, Original Orange, 10 Tablets (Pack of 3)
- RESPeRATE Blood Pressure Lowering Device
Book Reviews of Five Patients
Book Review: Well worth reading
Summary: 5 Stars
This book does an excellent job of painlessly teaching us about the history and techniques of medicine in the context of following five patients through their hospital stays.This book is medically out-of-date, since it is based on Crichton's OWN experiences as a medical student. I understand Crichton has taken a hiatus from his medical career to pursue a career in writing.
Summary of Five Patients
"Crichton has an extraordinary capacity to seize upon, then make real and personal, the new and the complex, the intriguing and the frighening."THE NATION
In this incisive, detailed survey of five patients, famous thriller author and doctor Michael Crichton explores the dramatic workings of Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston's oldest and most prestigious.
This readable account covers not only the history of the hospital's place in society, but also the actual minute-to-minute functions of Mass General, where health professionals wage their daily battle against disease and death. Crichton's insightful look at the changes in medicine and surgery caused by technological strides of recent years makes for amazing reading.
Michael Crichton, creator of many a blockbuster, began his writing career while still a student at Harvard Medical School. Though he never practiced medicine, the education was enough to put a gloss of verisimilitude on works like The Andromeda Strain and the long-running television hit ER. Five Patients is ER in real life--circa 1969, when Crichton graduated from medical school. Five different patients are examined at Massachusetts General Hospital; each patient's story illustrates some larger aspect of the hospital system. Thus, Ralph Orlando's death from cardiac arrest engenders a brief history of the modern hospital and emergency ward. John O'Connor, who has an unexplained high fever and infection, spends a month in the hospital, leading to a discourse on the cost of medical care (perhaps the most eye-opening chapter of the book--or the most unintentionally funny one from a 1999 perspective). The saga of Peter Luchesi, a worker whose hand is nearly severed in an industrial accident, leads to a discussion of 20th-century surgical advances. Sylvia Thompson, a traveler with chest pains who is seen by a doctor via closed-circuit TV at an airport, benefits from new (at the time) diagnostic and therapeutic technologies that have altered irrevocably the doctor's role. Finally, the case of Edith Murphy, diagnosed with systemic lupus erythematosus, serves quite literally to educate the medical students and interns who take on much of her care, as the hospital staff hierarchy is dissected and explained. Crichton's style here tends to the sober and bureaucratic--reading it is much more like brain surgery than hanging out in the staff room with George Clooney and Noah Wyle--but for the industrious it's a fascinating glimpse of pre-HMO medicine. --Barrie Trinkle
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