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Jump to navigationJump to searchDo No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery by Henry Marsh (view source)
Revision as of 14:49, 25 November 2014
, 14:49, 25 November 2014no edit summary
We've all heard the phrase 'it's not brain surgery' but what is it really like to operate on someone's brain in the frightening knowledge that a small slip, a slight error can have the most devastating consequences for the patient, with death probably not being the worst? Henry Marsh is a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons and Consultant Neurosurgeon at Atkinson Morley/St George's. If anyone knows what it's like then Henry Marsh is the man to tell you.
I'll confess that I started reading this book because it's on the shortlist for the 2014 Costa First Book Biography Award. I started reading it in the expectation that it might be rather tedious and beyond my basic biology. I expected to have to spend time on Google trying to understand what I was reading - or skipping over anything which went above my head. I thought it would be a book I worked at over a few day and felt virtuous when I finished it. I started reading it one evening and finished it at four o'clock the following morning and was rather cross when I turned the final page - I could have read much, much more on the subject.
What you read is a loosely-woven series of case histories, anecdotes and autobiography. Yes - each chapter has a heading of something you'd hope never to have the need to learn how to pronounce correctly, followed by a definition which was sufficient for even an ignoramus like me to understand roughly what we were talking about and then you have explanation of function and importance followed by a story - or stories - telling of operations or even the refusal to operate, as knowing when not to interfere is probably as crucial as knowing that the scalpel is sharp. I came to understand the need for distance between the patient and the surgeon and why they have a ready acceptance that sometimes death is inevitable and that nothing should be done to interfere with nature.
