Illustrations from a 1460 adaptation, printed by Schneider Ausgabe XII. On the left, the dying person is tempted by pride, and on the right they find salvation through humility. __________________________________________________________________________ I read Atul Gawande’s 2014 book Being Mortal just before I started medical school. I was really struck by Gawande’s vivid description of the way […]
We’re such an anxious bunch, aren’t we? We tend to focus far too much on the specifics of how we die, forgetting that ultimately, it doesn’t really matter because we all will die. Whether it’s the coronavirus, SARS, political violence, or whatever else that tomorrow brings, we have to remember that this life is just a […]
This book was quite a sobering read that I think everyone, especially those in medicine should pick up. As Dr. Atul Gawande states at the beginning of it, medical education is so focused on saving lives that physicians may be the least prepared for their patients to deal with the inevitable flip side of this […]
The following is an excerpt from Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Dr. Atul Gawande. This 2014 This book was quite a sobering read that I think everyone, especially those in medicine should pick up. As Dr. Gawande states at the beginning of it, medical education is so focused on saving lives that […]
The following is an excerpt from the epilogue written by Lucy Kalanithi to the recently published book When Breath Becomes Air written by her husband Paul Kalanithi, who died in March 2015 after a battle with stage IV lung cancer. It’s not merely a chronicle of how Paul reacted to and dealt with his cancer as it […]