Essential, required reading for doctors and patients alike: A Pulitzer
Prize-winning author and one of the world's premiere cancer researchers
reveals an urgent philosophy on the little-known principles that govern
medicine--and how understanding these principles can empower us all.
Over a decade ago, when Siddhartha Mukherjee was a young, exhausted, and
isolated medical resident, he discovered a book that would forever
change the way he understood the medical profession. The book, The
Youngest Science, forced Dr. Mukherjee to ask himself an urgent,
fundamental question: Is medicine a "science"? Sciences must have
laws--statements of truth based on repeated experiments that describe
some universal attribute of nature. But does medicine have laws like
other sciences?
Dr. Mukherjee has spent his career pondering this question--a question
that would ultimately produce some of most serious thinking he would do
around the tenets of his discipline--culminating in The Laws of
Medicine. In this important treatise, he investigates the most
perplexing and illuminating cases of his career that ultimately led him
to identify the three key principles that govern medicine.
Brimming with fascinating historical details and modern medical wonders,
this important book is a fascinating glimpse into the struggles and
Eureka! moments that people outside of the medical profession rarely
see. Written with Dr. Mukherjee's signature eloquence and passionate
prose, The Laws of Medicine is a critical read, not just for those in
the medical profession, but for everyone who is moved to better
understand how their health and well-being is being treated. Ultimately,
this book lays the groundwork for a new way of understanding medicine,
now and into the future.