Customer Reviews

The Deadly Dinner Party: and Other Medical Detective Stories

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Dr. Edlow is tenaciously honest and accurate in his communication of medical concepts and the limitations of medical knowledge; and he does so in a language everyone can understand. So approachable are Dr. Edlow's stories, that they are able to immerse their readers in a world of disease and investigation as if they were directly involved. He accomplishes this feat by wrapping each story in fascinating historical detail and everyday environments and foods many will have experienced. You may never attend a dinner party, pet your cat, admire Queen Elizabeth's crown jewels, or read Harry Potter in the same way again.

As a physician and a lover of well-written literature, I can wholeheartedly recommend this book to the lay person and medical professional alike.

As a physician and epidemiologist, who was pulled into the field by Berton Roueche's fantastic Medical Detectives articles, I am glad to say that Dr. Edlow has put together a collection of stories that carry the theme forward to today in a manner that is entertaining, witty, thorough, and educational. A superb book, and I recommend it highly!

I read this book quite by chance on a transatlantic flight and was glad I did. I was bringing the book back to Italy for a friend, a doctor, who bought it in the US and forgot it while visiting. While on the flight for the first leg from Boston to Amsterdam I decided to read it and after reading about a third of it was disappointed when the plane finally landed. I read more on the flight from Amsterdam to Florence, and finished it in my apartment later that same day, in spite of having to unpack and get ready for work the next day.

Each story is easy to read, with a mix of detective work, explainable science, and in many cases enough about the human condition to make it amusing. Dr. Edlow writes it as if spinning a yarn sitting across from you in an Enoteca, giving descriptions of patients physical characteristics, quotes from the patient, family, and friends as well as explaining the working hypothesis of the investigators trying to solve each medical mystery. It also gave me a new appreciation for those medical sleuths that work attempting to solve the problems of infectious disease at places like the Center for Disease Control.

I ended up ordering my own edition of the book for my wife to read as well as one of Edlow's other books, "Bullseye"

Like any good detective story, each case study in "The Deadly Dinner Party" presents the mystery, offers clues (including red herrings) and eventually reveals the often surprising solution. Along the way, there are fascinating and delightful forays into science, history, psychology, popular culture, and business. The writing is intelligent without being too technical or overly dramatic, resulting in a thoroughly enjoyable and educational book.

Jonathan Edlow's "The Deadly Dinner Party" is an excellent read that follows in the tradition of "Bull's Eye", his earlier work on uncovering the mystery of Lyme Disease. Each chapter provides a fast paced vignette of a deadly or serious malady that vexed a medical practitioner, his or her backup team and, of course, one or more victims. Nothing is what it seems, and patients suffer, usually seriously and often close to death, with the Grim Reaper acting as timekeeper in the physician's game of wits with unruly and often unknowable secrets of nature.

Although modern technology offers information and support for these modern medical sleuths, very often it is the physician's knowledge of prior medical research and clinical history from decades or centuries past that provides the critical clues allowing the right treatment from modern medicine's arsenal. In many cases the solution is not an esoteric drug or procedure, but something as simple as a change of diet, or a change of process by a third-party such as a food vendor. In each case Edlow gives us an in-depth view of the many researchers and clinicians that pursued obscure and dangerous diseases in times past. To a layman it is fascinating to see how various historic figures pursued their quarry with such energy and diligence, and it is equally fascinating to learn that they documented their work so carefully that it is available to rescue today's medical professionals in modern dilemmas. The author presents current symptoms and prior research in sufficient detail (sometimes approaching the graphics of TV's CSI series) to give the reader a gripping sense of how a patient suffers and what dreadful fate might await him or her. This also provides the reader with great insights not only into clinical practice and medical history, but also into the need for good personal and social hygiene.

Dr. Edlow, in his description of patients, treats each with great tenderness and respect. As an aside, he reminds us in each chapter that the patient's name is fictitious, which I found somewhat tedious, but which is no doubt required by publishers in our litigious society. His description of each patient's humanity also gives us insight into the humanity of their medical providers. The reader can sense the anxiety and concern that doctors have when they can't solve a patient's problem. Even though we all convince ourselves that medical professionals learn to leave problems at work and not bring them home, among Edlow's practitioners that's not the case. For those of us who have been patients, we take great solace in believing that our service providers are thinking about us 24 hours a day. And so it is with Edlow's detectives, professionally trained, blessed with high intellect and typically overachievers (the type whom we probably envied or disliked in high school) who give no quarter and have no rest until their patient is restored to health. Behind the hospital administrator, insurance analyst or Medicare bureaucrat and a large impersonal hospital edifice, Edlow subtly tells us there is a doctor, nurse or lab technician that cares about each patient. If they didn't, the medical mystery would go unsolved and the patient would continue to suffer, and die.

Not only is "The Deadly Dinner Party" entertainment, but it is a convenient way to learn some interesting things about medicine, hygiene and technology. In short it is highly educational. In fact, it should be considered as an educational tool for high school and college health or social science classes. The cases are realistic, and fun. (I was struck by the realism when I discovered that one of the service providers described in a specific case, which I won't mention so that the mystery is not revealed in advance to the reader, is a service provider that I use to this day. I inquired of one of its employees if the case was factual, and learned that indeed it was.) For senior high school and college students Edlow's treatment of these mysteries would provide inspiration for some students to choose a career in medicine, but for all it would provide great insights into modern advances in biology, genetic science and medicine, and the need for conscientious practice of personal, social and industrial hygiene. "The Deadly Dinner Party" is entertaining and stimulating for all, and a great educational tool.

This book is written as a set of fifteen medical whodunits, one per chapter. Each story starts off with a person either appearing in the emergency room or falling ill and winding up there or something along those lines. As each story unfolds, the reader can really get absorbed into it, just like in a Sherlock Holmes story. As the plot thickens and the pages zip by, something unfortunate happens - interludes. The author has chosen to insert interludes in midstream in which a poison, a disease, an herb, etc., is discussed in detail, including its history (which can date back centuries), people involved, its evolution, etc. This interlude (or interludes, since sometimes there are more than one in a story) can last a few paragraphs or several pages. Although this information is quite interesting, by the time the interlude is over, and the story resumes, the original element of excitement has been severely dampened. This is unfortunate. Perhaps if these interludes had been relegated to the ends of the chapters, as appendices containing supplementary information, the momentum of the stories would not have been compromised.

The writing style is clear, friendly and quite engaging. There are many technical medical terms used; these are often explained but not in all cases. However, this does not detract from getting the gist of the stories, although it may slow down some general readers who want to understand everything in them. This book can be enjoyed by just about anyone, but especially those in the medical/health care professions.

Most doctors (myself included) depend on short cuts and rule of thumb in establishing a diagnosis.
Jonathan Edlow's fascinating medical stories illustrate that in more challenging clinical situations the practitioner will be required to be more a detective than a doctor. This requires patience and deductive skill and the solution can on occasion be quite surprizing. For instance the source of an obscure bacterial infection being located in the baby sitter's fish tank or another nasty organism lurking in a loofah sponge.

Dr Edlow writes in a simple and clear style that would interest both medical practitioners and the lay public. His style does not approach the greatness of other medical writers such as Jerome Groopman, Marcia Angell or Atul Gawande but is eminently readable. I enjoyed this book very much and it has reminded me to be more thoughtful in making my diagnoses!

This is a wonderfully written collection of medical mysteries. The cases are told as real-life stories, and I felt as if I was a part of the detective work which brought us back to the garlic bread or wet loofah. As a doctor, I find the cases are both gripping and educational. I recommend this book to anyone with an interest in medical thrillers or if you want to see how doctors think about complex cases.

From the other reviews I had high expectations of thrilling medical detective work, garden path wrong diagnoses, and surprising "a-ha" moments, usually my favorite aspect of popular "case study" books. And there is some medical detective work, but the pacing is slow, and scenes of doctors and CDC action heroes collecting clues and making logical leaps are buried buried in between long tangents and asides. I have no problem with the author hiding key clues among red herrings, but it's more than that--after the solution is revealed, the author will provide a list of six other similar cases, or a summarize the history of a surgical procedure dating back to 650 BC.

Surprising twists are also limited as the organization of the chapters gives away information about the solution to the mystery (e.g. all the food poisoning chapters are grouped together).

Although this book is working the "thrilling mystery" angle, I found myself less interested in these case studies than those in case study books with different illustrative aims, such as "Every Patient Tells a Story" by Lisa Sanders and "Complications" by Atul Gawande.

I loved this book and have given it as a gift to many friends and relatives who loved it as well. Dr. Edlow has a gift for writing, teaching and story telling. Each story was both suspenseful and educational in so many ways. Plus, they are all true and could happen to anyone! The author gives a concise, easy to understand definition of terms we all hear often but sometimes don't fully understand. He integrates these into the stories--each time he uses a medical term one might not know, there is always a quick explanation just following it. I liked that--I learned a lot while the suspense of each story kept me glued to this book. I liked that I could read a chapter a night and really get into each story. They are all so different but I imagine the author, as a practicing emergency room doctor in busy Boston runs into all sorts of situations/illnesses on his shifts. I would recommend this book for anyone, from young people curious about the medical field, to your grandmother who likes to stay healthy and everyone in between! The stories are amazing and really make you think (and cautious on your next trip to the hospital!) Actually, I feel much better equipped to deal with doctors and any health issues I may have after reading this book. It's great that there are doctors like Edlow still out there--the ones that take the time to get to the bottom of what a patient has so that misdiagnosis' are kept to a minimum. Great and enjoyable read for anyone!