Book Reviews: Do No Harm
Dr Henry Marsh is a former neurosurgeon who has written a couple of books, one of which is the excellent ‘Do No Harm.’
This is the first book I’ve read this year and I’m exceptionally pleased that I picked it out as the first to be read. Henry Marsh writes with clinical precision as he guides us through a prestigious career. However each page of this book is alight with blistering honesty about where the surgeon’s knife ends and where luck takes over.
A few of the chapters are titled with words like ‘Astrocytoma’ and ‘Glioblastoma’, what’s wonderful is that Marsh doesn’t expect his reader to understand these terms. Instead, under each word is a definition and thus the reader can already get a sense of what the chapter will hold in store.
The cases are extremely varied, and each presents the reader with a way of viewing the dangerous but rewarding career of neurosurgery. Marsh’s own view of neurosurgery is extremely bipolar in which we are confronted right the start. On one hand we have the love of neuroanatomy and neurosurgery in general, this is completely evident and the reader is assured that Dr Henry Marsh loved his work and felt and cared deeply for his patients.
However the reader is also confronted with the idea that there are very few who could handle the obligations and responsibilities of the job. From holding someone’s entire life within their hands, to dealing with families who either respect too much, or too little, the surgeon standing in front of them.
The work itself is ridiculously taxing, with surgery being complicated in a variety of ways. No two surgeries are alike, and Marsh takes us through each one and shows how complex neurosurgery is and how much it demands of the surgeon.
The mind is what the brain does, and the scary part of this book, as with so much of the literature on neurology, is that we are all standing on the precipice of mental health. We are all one aneurysm or tumour away from being altered in profound ways. Marsh’s book will humble you, and force you to appreciate neurosurgeons in a way you never thought possible.
But above all, the reader will respect the uncompromising honesty.
10/10
