Customer Reviews

The Mysteries Within: A Surgeon Explores Myth, Medicine, and the Human Body

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I come from a medical family (Dad, a surgeon; Mom, a nurse; Little Sister, a pediatrician). Unfortunately, I hit the limits of my scientific education in high school biology. So, I picked up this book in hopes that it would reveal some of the mysteries of their professions and give me some insight into the reasons why people treat often treat physicians as magicians.

Nuland's book doesn't strip away the mystique of the surgeon's work, nor does it really capture the nature of a modern surgical practice. Instead, it provides an overview of many of the structures that a surgeon encounters in his day to day work (stomach, spleen, liver, etc.) and describes the mythology that accompanies each organ. He also provides tales from his own cases about where these myths have broken down and ultimately posits that science should triumph over mythology.

Nuland tells a good story, both anecdotal and historical. His writing is clear, although he tends to use two words when one might do. The organzation of the book is clear and he does a fine job a translating medicine into layperson's terms.

Sherwin Nuland's first two books are among my favorites. His How We Live is a beautiful tribute to the mysteries of the human body and the promise and limits of medicine. His latest book is a disappointment in that regard. The cases aren't as compelling -- and the first case left me feeling that he had milked a family's ignorance for medicine's unnecessary aggrandizement. He packs a lot into the medical history sections, which can either make them breezy or thin. Overall, it's an interesting book, but start with his earlier works and you'll have a much richer reading experience.

This is a remarkable book written by a gifted surgeon, who wields a pen perhaps a touch less brilliantly than a scalpel. The only reason I say less, is that after reading one specific part of the book, I was overwhelmed with what can happen in an operating room. This is why I used the word thriller for the book, but other sections are as mysterious as Holmes versus Moriarty, and the historical perspective is brilliantly shared and summarized without losing the cadence of the book.

Dr. Nuland with his third work, "The Mysteries Within", brings a view of medicine unlike any I have read before. He takes you through a procedure that he claims brought dumb luck to the operating table for both he and his patient, luck that saved a life that was almost a guaranteed loss. He shares the inspiration that Residents and Interns bring with their youth, and calculated daring. Do you know what a bezoars is? I didn't until I read this book. And if the detective work that solved this enigma does not leave you marveling at just how wide and varied a surgeon's skills must be, I don't know what will. The example for you is perhaps in another section of the book.

He and the men and women he speaks of are remarkable, yet he always puts what is known and observable into relation with less tangible ideas. Whether it is religious faith, or faith in the Doctor or a pill, or hope in the unproven, he is never dismissive. The only intolerance he shows is for those who lack the openness of mind that welcomes all possibility, or deals in absolutes. His statements on religion and science and how they legitimately coexist, are not incongruous, and perhaps essential to each other, is stated as eloquently as I have ever heard the issue summarized.

It is rare person who can reach inside the ill, the broken bodies, and the lives that should end but do not. The pressure they operate under is explained, but I believe true understanding is left only for those who are the participants. Hopefully most will never need the skills and the "luck" that you will experience in this book. However in the event you or someone you care for does, hope that it will be a surgeon like this man, the men and women he learned from, or perhaps those he has taught.

Unconditionally recommended!

Dr. Nuland's way with the English language is as eloquent as the topic of discussion in his newest work.

This book is not so much an exploration of "The Body," as it is an exploration of the actual ways Medicine has sought to explore its own discipline.

It is a fantastic, but all too short trip into the great minds of Medical thinkers, including Nuland himself, and the ways in which they have accelerated its progress; indeed, it also makes light of the ways, doctors, have stifled it.

It is, very much, vintage Nuland -with its prose, and offerings of philosophical insight. But it is not like his other books -he doesn't deal with life and the body as in his other achievements. But, if you like Medical history; if you like knowing about the ways some of our most sacred accomplishments in the field came about, then buy this book.

I read a review of this book in the Boston Globe and ordered it on Amazon immediately. It sounded fascinating, but overall the book turned out to be quite a dissapointment. I found Dr. Nuland's anecdotal descriptions of his surgical experiences riveting -- the stuff that keeps me tuning in to "ER" every Thursday night. Unfortunately, the true "guts" of the book, the history of mankind's understanding of the organs and how they work was very dry and at times repetitive. I wished that Dr. Nuland could have told the story of the discovery of the function of the liver, for example, with the same intensity as he described his first personal experience with open-heart surgery.

Sherwin Nuland lost himself in his own circuitious, excessive prose in this book. He comes through in a few spots, such as when he describes what a jerk he was to the husband of the liver patient described in the book. For the most part, most of this book could be condensed to about half of it's space. I was misled when I thought each chapter would contain observations of an operation and was instead forced to read pages and pages of a long-winded history of science, through the eyes of this author. This book can be easily skimmed without missing much. The Rembrant painting on the cover was nice though.

I love Nuland's writing, and could spend hours meandering through his explanations of medical phenomena. But this particular book was either poorly conceived or shoddily edited, because I found it much more difficult to get through than his usual lively mix of clinical experience and academic background.

There's just no balance here. That usually-delightful mix is completely absent, traded in for clumps of one or the other. He'll give a couple of tantalizingly tabloid case histories, some personal information about his own medical training, then chapters and chapters of academic detail. It just doesn't work for me.

Still fascinating as a glimpse of where medical thought is coming from, and as usual, Nuland is brilliant at pointing out the vestiges of old ideas and anachronisms even within modern medicine. But as the title suggests, this really is a surgeon "reflecting," with seemingly no particular direction, intention, or goal.

Too bad, though, because there's a lot of fascinating potential here.

"The Mysteries Within" is a book about the myths that have developed in medicine over the last several millenia. In it Dr. Nuland discusses the evolution of thought concerning various organs. He also goes into detail describing where some modern words and expressions have come from. Interspersed with these histories are an occasional jewel from his career as a surgeon. Overall it is a good book, although it seems slightly slow at times.

An excellent book! He discusses how medical science has advanced (and, incidentally, how alternative medicine has not). Interspersing medical history with some actual cases of his makes it even more readable!

For anyone who likes solid writing, imagination and a bit of fun here and there, feel free to buy anything by Dr. Nuland or, in fact, Richard Selzer.