The Uncertain Art: Thoughts on a Life in Medicine | 
 enlarge | Author: Sherwin B. Nuland
Publisher: Random House
Category: Book
List Price: $25.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  4 reviews
Sales Rank: 21795
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 224
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 6.3 x 1.2
ISBN: 1400064783
Dewey Decimal Number: 610.92
EAN: 9781400064786
ASIN: 1400064783
Publication Date: May 20, 2008
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Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: May have small remainder mark on bottom. 100% money back guarantee. All books shipped from Strand Bookstore, New York City, USA.
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Product Description
“Life is short, and the Art so long; the occasion fleeting; experience fallacious; and judgment difficult. The physician must not only be prepared to do what is right himself, but also to make the patient, the attendants, and the externals, cooperate.”
–attributed to Hippocrates, c. 400 B.C.E.
The award-winning author of How We Die and The Art of Aging, venerated physician Sherwin B. Nuland has now written his most thoughtful and engaging book. The Uncertain Art is a superb collection of essays about the vital mix of expertise, intuition, sound judgment, and pure chance that plays a part in a doctor’s practice and life.
Drawing from history, the recent past, and his own life, Nuland weaves a tapestry of compelling stories in which doctors have had to make decisions in the face of uncertainty. Topics include the primitive (and sometimes illegal) procedures doctors once practiced with good intentions, such as grave robbing and prescribing cocaine as an anesthetic (which resulted in a physician becoming America’s first cocaine addict); the curious “cures” for irregularity touted by people from the ancient Egyptians to the cereal titan John Harvey Kellogg and bodybuilder Charles Atlas; and healers grappling with today’s complex moral and ethical quandaries, from cloning to gene therapy to the adoption of Eastern practices like acupuncture.
Nuland also recounts his most dramatic experiences in a forty-year medical career: the time he was called out of the audience of a Broadway play to help a man having a heart attack (when no other doctor there would respond), and how he formed a profound friendship with an unforgettable–and doomed–heart patient. Behind these inspiring accounts always lie the mysteries of the human body and human nature, the manner in which the ill can will themselves back to health and the odd and essential interactions between a body’s own healing mechanisms and a doctor’s prescriptions.
Riveting and wise, amusing and heartrending, The Uncertain Art is Sherwin Nuland’s best work, gems from a man who has spent his professional life acting in the face of ambiguity and sharing what he has learned.
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| Customer Reviews:
A NEW ETHICAL CONSIDERATION July 20, 2008
THE UNCERTAIN ART THOUGHTS ON A LIFE IN MEDICINE
By Sherwood B. Nuland M.D.
("And sign here if you'd like to see his organs become more involved in community theatre." Danny Shanaban, Cartoon Caption in THE NEW YORKER, July 21,2008.)
In his latest collection of medical essays, THE UNCERTAIN ART, Dr. Sherwin B. Nuland, tells us about a new perhaps controversial and decidedly complex medical development: human heart transplantation. This essay is presented towards the book's ending, though to me and possibly to most readers, this is the books most important section.
Heart transplantation presents mammoth emotional, economic, and ethical aspects to patient care. It is an entity never before confronted, which comes with the inevitable condition that someone must die before any patient can benefit.
Dr. Nuland presents the subject with his usual fluidity and clarity. Heart transplantation and its possible ramifications is important to physicians, councelors, and especially to the ones who may need it the most; potential patient candidates.
In a manner, Dr. Nuland's book is "the voice in the wilderness," maybe alerting the world of his new treatment. However, the public in general has to become more conversant and involved in heart transplantation. This is a process of human-to-human bonding and to many it will mean "going too far," while to others it is the only "miraculous ray of hope."
I strongly recommend reading it.
 not up to Nuland's standard July 18, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book is a collection of recycled pieces written for the magazine of the Phi Beta Kappa society. Nothing is inherently wrong with a compilation, although the pieces didn't flow all that smoothly together. More important is the subject matter addressed; many of the chapters just didn't capture my interest the way his previous books have. And the writing seems a bit pretentious; never use a short word when a longer one can found. Its almost like the articles were written to impress those who are thought to fancy themselves to be of a certain refined intellectual and critical level (eg PBK members), as if to say "sure, I'm a doctor and not a college professor but I have a big vocabulary too!"
More, please June 17, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
I enjoyed this book, as I do all of Nuland's offerings, but it wasn't riveting - it was more like meandering through a park. Most of these pieces were previously published in periodicals, and like many compilations, the necessary brevity normally demanded by magazine editors left me, in several cases, wishing for more fleshing out of the various subjects introduced. I especially missed that which Nuland has done so well in his previous books - brought the subject matter literally to life based on specific stories of his patients. This was done only in the final chapter, and not coincidentally, this chapter was by far the most interesting, compassionate, and illustrative of his central thesis. Nevertheless, considering the nonsense that passes for literature today, well worth having and reading more than once.
 Medicine in historical perspective by a knowledgeable and compassionate intellectual and practicing physician June 16, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Dr. Nuland writes engagingly, perceptively, compassionately, historically, and synthetically about the uncertain art of medicine. No one physician has the capacity or lifespan to learn fully the art of medicine, as Hippocrates and his students recognized two and a half millennia ago (5th & 4th century B.C.E.). Dr. Nuland explores the implications of that first part of the first aphorism of the Hippocratic Corpus of writings. I cannot imagine that any physician, surgeon, biomedical researcher, and medical student would not consider reading this personal-professional-instructional account a memorable and personally influencial experience.
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