The Scalpel and the Soul: Encounters with Surgery, the Supernatural, and the Healing Power of Hope

The Scalpel and the Soul: Encounters with Surgery, the Supernatural, and the Healing Power of Hope
by Allan J. Hamilton

The Scalpel and the Soul: Encounters with Surgery, the Supernatural, and the Healing Power of Hope
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Book Summary Information

Author: Allan J. Hamilton
Foreword: Andrew Weil
Edition: Hardcover
Published: 2008-03-13
ISBN: 1585426156
Number of pages: 272
Publisher: Tarcher

Book Reviews of The Scalpel and the Soul: Encounters with Surgery, the Supernatural, and the Healing Power of Hope

Book Review: An honest doctor story
Summary: 5 Stars

If you like books by Jerome Groopman and Atul Gawande, you may like this book. But this book focuses on the part of medicine we can't explain, rather than trying to explain more about medicine.


If you like your medical orientation the Andrew Weil way, you will probably like this book. Weil wrote the introduction and the author shares much or Weil's philosophy.

As others have noted, the best parts of the book are (a) the story about the woman who was supposed to die in 4 months; she lived to attend her doctor's own funeral and died at 88; and (b) the recommendations for ordinary people who become patients. I've always suspected we're better off if we stay away from hospitals and retain a healthy skepticism about doctors.

Readers may be concerned about the author's advice to pray with their doctors. Given the limited amount of time available to get questions answered, some of us might prefer to focus on topics that doctors are uniquely qualified to discuss. That whole area is controversial and it's one chapter I wish had been deleted from this book.

Generally, though, I recommend Scalpel and the Soul as yet another contribution to the "skeptical books about the medical profession written by doctors." A valuable corrective to those who continue to see doctors as the contemporary version of the Roman gods.

Summary of The Scalpel and the Soul: Encounters with Surgery, the Supernatural, and the Healing Power of Hope

A Harvard-educated neurosurgeon reveals his experiences-in and out of the operating room-with apparitions, angels, exorcism, and after-death survival, and shares the lessons he learned.

A young burn victim remains in a coma until a ghost appears.
A doctor discovers he can predict when a patient will die.
A clinically dead patient later recounts extraordinary details about the private lives of her caregivers.
A physician needs the help of a Navajo shaman to exorcise the spirit of his dead patient.


These things really happened-and neurosurgeon Allan J. Hamilton was involved in every one of them, and many more. Based on thirty years of medical experience, The Scalpel and the Soul tells the unspoken stories behind remarkable patients and strange events, and shares the moral and spiritual lessons found in them.

For physicians, supernatural inklings and intrusions are disturbing. Doctors cannot be candid with colleagues or patients because they are trained to disregard the inexplicable and unbelievable. They're taught to discount elusive, evanescent powers of the soul. Superstition, omens, and divine spirits smack of madness.

But patients have the same experiences. Life-threatening illness or surgery frequently brings dormant spirituality to life. The soul often needs more than intensive care alone can give. The Scalpel and the Soul explores how premonition, superstition, hope, and faith not only become factors in how patients feel but can change outcomes; it validates the spiritual manifestations physicians see every day; it empowers patients to voice their spiritual needs when they seek medical help; and, finally, it addresses the mysterious, attractive powers the soul exerts during life-threatening events.

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