The Laws of Medicine: Field Notes from an Uncertain Science
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About this ebook
Over a decade ago, when Siddhartha Mukherjee was a young, exhausted, and isolated medical resident, he discovered a book that would forever change the way he understood the medical profession. The book, The Youngest Science, forced Dr. Mukherjee to ask himself an urgent, fundamental question: Is medicine a “science”? Sciences must have laws—statements of truth based on repeated experiments that describe some universal attribute of nature. But does medicine have laws like other sciences?
Dr. Mukherjee has spent his career pondering this question—a question that would ultimately produce some of most serious thinking he would do around the tenets of his discipline—culminating in The Laws of Medicine. In this important treatise, he investigates the most perplexing and illuminating cases of his career that ultimately led him to identify the three key principles that govern medicine.
Brimming with fascinating historical details and modern medical wonders, this important book is a fascinating glimpse into the struggles and Eureka! moments that people outside of the medical profession rarely see. Written with Dr. Mukherjee’s signature eloquence and passionate prose, The Laws of Medicine is a critical read, not just for those in the medical profession, but for everyone who is moved to better understand how their health and well-being is being treated. Ultimately, this book lays the groundwork for a new way of understanding medicine, now and into the future.
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Siddhartha Mukherjee is the author of The Gene: An Intimate History, a #1 New York Times bestseller; The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction; and The Laws of Medicine. He is the editor of Best Science Writing 2013. Mukherjee is an associate professor of medicine at Columbia University and a cancer physician and researcher. A Rhodes scholar, he graduated from Stanford University, University of Oxford, and Harvard Medical School. In 2023, he was elected as a new member of the National Academy of Medicine. He has published articles in many journals, including Nature, The New England Journal of Medicine, Cell, The New York Times Magazine, and The New Yorker. He lives in New York with his wife and daughters. Visit his website at: SiddharthaMukherjee.com.
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Reviews for The Laws of Medicine
48 ratings6 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Very good to read. The patient is " outlier" by himself.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Excelente explanação; acredito que a contribuição para o conhecimento vale
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A great lesson of humanity and most important, of humility.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Very nice demonstration of the every day biases in the medicine. This book demonstrates the we as doctors have to be humble to our decisions and results. As researches, we sometimes forget the patients and get fixated on the results.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5It's a great work from Sidhartha. I am appreciating you for this fabulous work
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Great book showing how medicine can still improve a lot
Book preview
The Laws of Medicine - Siddhartha Mukherjee
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To Thomas Bayes (1702–1761), who saw uncertainty with such certainty
Are you planning to follow a career in Magical Laws, Miss Granger?
asked Scrimgeour.
No, I’m not,
retorted Hermione. I’m hoping to do some good in the world!
J. K. Rowling
The learned men of former ages employed a great part of their time and thoughts searching out the hidden causes of distemper, were curious in imagining the secret workmanship of nature and . . . putting all these fancies together, fashioned to themselves systems and hypotheses [that] diverted their enquiries from the true and advantageous knowledge of things.
John Locke
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Years ago, as a medical student in Boston, I watched a senior surgeon operate on a woman. The surgeon, call him Dr. Castle, was a legend among the surgical residents. About six feet tall, with an imposing, formal manner that made the trainees quake in their clogs, he spoke in a slow, nasal tone that carried the distinct drawl of the South. There was something tensile in his build—more steel wire than iron girder—as if his physique had been built to illustrate the difference between stamina and strength. He began rounds at five every morning, then moved down to the operating theaters in the basement by six fifteen, and worked through the day into the early evening. He spent the weekends sailing near Scituate in a one-mast sloop that he had nicknamed The Knife.
The residents worshipped Castle not only for the precision of his technique, but also because of the quality of his teaching. Other surgeons may have been kinder, gentler instructors, but the key to Castle’s teaching method was supreme self-confidence. He was so technically adept at surgery—so masterful at his craft—that he allowed the students to do most of the operating, knowing that he could anticipate their mistakes or correct them swiftly after. If a resident nicked an artery during an operation, a lesser surgeon might step in nervously to seal the bleeding vessel. Castle would step back and fold his arms, look quizzically at the resident, and wait for him or her to react. If the stitch came too late, Castle’s hand would reach out, with the speed and precision of a falcon’s talon, to pinch off the bleeding vessel, and he would stitch it himself, shaking his head, as if mumbling to himself, Too little, too late.
I have never seen senior residents in surgery, grown men and women with six or eight years of operating experience, so deflated by the swaying of a human head.
The case that morning was a woman in her fifties with a modest-size tumor in her lower intestine. We were scheduled to begin at six fifteen, as usual, but the resident assigned to the case had called in sick. A new resident was paged urgently from the wards, and he came quickly into the operating room, tugging his gloves on. Castle walked up to the CAT scans hung on the fluorescent lightbox, studied them silently for a while, then moved his head ever so slightly, signaling the first incision. There was a reverential moment as he stretched out his right hand and the nurse handed him the scalpel. The surgery began without incident.
About half an hour later, the operation was still under perfect control. Some surgeons liked to blast music in the operating room—rock and roll and Brahms were common choices—but Castle preferred silence. The resident was working fast and doing well. The only advice that Castle had offered was to increase the size of the incision to fully expose the inner abdomen. If you can’t name it, you can’t cut it,
he said.
But then the case took a quick turn. As the resident reached down to cut the tumor out of the body, the blood vessels surrounding it began to leak. At first, there was only a trickle, and then a few more spurts. In a few minutes about a teaspoon of blood had run into in the surgical field, obscuring the view. The carefully exposed tissues were submerged in a crimson flood. Castle stood by the side, his hands folded, watching.
The resident was clearly flustered. I watched a pool of sweat forming over his brow, mirroring the pool of blood in front