The Uncertain Art: Thoughts on a Life in Medicine | 
 enlarge | Author: Sherwin B. Nuland
Publisher: Random House
Category: Book
List Price: $25.00
Buy New: $13.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  2 reviews
Sales Rank: 32438
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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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:
 More, please June 17, 2008
3 out of 3 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
1 out of 1 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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