My Heart - The Book
A book which a friend lent me during my recovery period was "The Lost Art of Healing" by Bernard Lown MD, Published by Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston New York in 1996. Its author is a Cardiologist, a famous one at that. Bernard Lown is Professor Emeritus of Cardiology at Harvard School of Public Health at the time when he wrote the book.
Its a good book if one wants to know about the history of cardiology and a Doctor’s views and moral values of the relationship between a Doctor and a patient. Certain aspect I like most were on various aspects of heart problems. In one of the Chapters, he wrote (I stand corrected) about external massaging the chest walls when there is suspect problem to the heart, (which I understood it that way anyway - its open to others interpretation). I remember when I was about 4 or 5 years old, I had very severe chest pain and I nearly died. (I suppose it was my heart). But every time the pain came, my grandmother used to massage my chest cage hard and I came to be well. That lasted for a few days but it just went away for good after that few days incident and I grew up, not so healthy but strong enough to live until today. Another Chapter he wrote (I stand corrected) about having a heart attack, (which I understood it to be that way anyway - its open to others interpretation). He said that the attack mostly come at the quiet hours, night time so I interpret, you sleep and wake up because of the queer feeling in the chest or the exact whereabouts you cannot really point out to. That happened to me, which led me to the heart surgery.
There are many subjects on heart and on doctoring which I learnt from the book where I would not have learnt about until I read it.
There are certain quotes which the author quoted in the book which I would like to share. These were said in jest but they are the truth. These are quotes from various people.
"I wouldn’t demand a lot of my doctor’s time. I just wish he would brood on my situation for perhaps five minutes, that he would give me his whole mind just once, be bonded with me for a brief space, survey my soul as well as my flesh to get at my illness, for each man is ill in his own way.........Just as he orders blood test and bone scans of my body, I’d like my doctor to scan me, to grope for my spirit as well as my prostate. Without some such recognition, I am nothing but my illness" ---------------Anatole Broyard .....1990 .....essayist.
"And all mistakes, sins that have been secreted,
Pound themselves like epileptics,
Saying, ‘That which is not expressed will be forgotten,
And what is forgotten will happen again’"................................Yevtushenko .........poet.
"Virtue itself turn vice, being misapplied;
And vice sometime’s by action dignified.
Within the infant rind of this small flower
Poison hath residence, and medicine power".......................Shakespeare ----Romeo & Juliet.
"Jogging causes heart attacks in the elderly, and slipped disks in the young; bed rest encourages blood clots...coffee leads to gout; tea is constipating; eggs clog the arteries. If you bib wine expect cancer of the larynx. If you sleep, you dream, and an exciting dream may wind up in coronary occlusion. To cap the climax, as advocates birth control might put it, semen has been charged with responsibility for cancer of the cervix....Living may be dangerous for your health"..................................Willard R Espy.....................Alamanac of Word Play.
"We live by the rules of the elderly. If the toothbrush is wet, you have cleaned your teeth...if you are wearing one brown and one black shoe, quite possible there is a similar pair in the closet. I stagger when I walk, and small boys follow me, making bets on which way I’ll go. This upsets me. Children should not gamble"..................Bruce Bliven.....former of The New Republic...on blights of age.
"Though you are young and I am old
Though your vaines hot and my blood is colde,
Though youth is moist and age is drie,
Yet embers live when flames die"................Thomas Campion.....a musician, poet and physician.16th-17th Cent.
"The physician is not just a prescriber of mdicaments but a symbol of all that is transferable from one human being to another short of immortality. We may not be able to live forever, but we persist in the notion that the physician possesses the science and the artistary that will provide us with endless deferrals. He seems to be in command of those fastness where the secret of life are stored"....................Norman Cousions....in The Healing Heart.
"When death was regarded as a metasphysic event, it commanded a kind of respect. Today when the process is long protracted it seems as evidence of failure. A dying patient is a kind of freak. It is most unacceptable of all abnormalities, an offense against nature itself....In a sense quite new to our culture, we have become ashamed of death, and we try to hide ourselves away from it. It is, in our way of thinking, failure...There is really no such thing as the agony of dying. I’m quite sure that pain is shut off at the moment of death...Something happens when the body is about to go. Peptide hormone are released by cells in the hypothalamus and pituitary glands. Endorphins. They attach themselves to the cells responsible for feeling pain...On the whole...I believe in the kindness of nature at the time of death".......................Lewis Thomas.......essayist & physician....1993.........Interviewed by Roger Rosenblatt of New York Times.
I have not become wiser by reading the book but I have become more knowledgeable.
To shout back, e-mail: mylias@tm.net.my
Its a good book if one wants to know about the history of cardiology and a Doctor’s views and moral values of the relationship between a Doctor and a patient. Certain aspect I like most were on various aspects of heart problems. In one of the Chapters, he wrote (I stand corrected) about external massaging the chest walls when there is suspect problem to the heart, (which I understood it that way anyway - its open to others interpretation). I remember when I was about 4 or 5 years old, I had very severe chest pain and I nearly died. (I suppose it was my heart). But every time the pain came, my grandmother used to massage my chest cage hard and I came to be well. That lasted for a few days but it just went away for good after that few days incident and I grew up, not so healthy but strong enough to live until today. Another Chapter he wrote (I stand corrected) about having a heart attack, (which I understood it to be that way anyway - its open to others interpretation). He said that the attack mostly come at the quiet hours, night time so I interpret, you sleep and wake up because of the queer feeling in the chest or the exact whereabouts you cannot really point out to. That happened to me, which led me to the heart surgery.
There are many subjects on heart and on doctoring which I learnt from the book where I would not have learnt about until I read it.
There are certain quotes which the author quoted in the book which I would like to share. These were said in jest but they are the truth. These are quotes from various people.
"I wouldn’t demand a lot of my doctor’s time. I just wish he would brood on my situation for perhaps five minutes, that he would give me his whole mind just once, be bonded with me for a brief space, survey my soul as well as my flesh to get at my illness, for each man is ill in his own way.........Just as he orders blood test and bone scans of my body, I’d like my doctor to scan me, to grope for my spirit as well as my prostate. Without some such recognition, I am nothing but my illness" ---------------Anatole Broyard .....1990 .....essayist.
"And all mistakes, sins that have been secreted,
Pound themselves like epileptics,
Saying, ‘That which is not expressed will be forgotten,
And what is forgotten will happen again’"................................Yevtushenko .........poet.
"Virtue itself turn vice, being misapplied;
And vice sometime’s by action dignified.
Within the infant rind of this small flower
Poison hath residence, and medicine power".......................Shakespeare ----Romeo & Juliet.
"Jogging causes heart attacks in the elderly, and slipped disks in the young; bed rest encourages blood clots...coffee leads to gout; tea is constipating; eggs clog the arteries. If you bib wine expect cancer of the larynx. If you sleep, you dream, and an exciting dream may wind up in coronary occlusion. To cap the climax, as advocates birth control might put it, semen has been charged with responsibility for cancer of the cervix....Living may be dangerous for your health"..................................Willard R Espy.....................Alamanac of Word Play.
"We live by the rules of the elderly. If the toothbrush is wet, you have cleaned your teeth...if you are wearing one brown and one black shoe, quite possible there is a similar pair in the closet. I stagger when I walk, and small boys follow me, making bets on which way I’ll go. This upsets me. Children should not gamble"..................Bruce Bliven.....former of The New Republic...on blights of age.
"Though you are young and I am old
Though your vaines hot and my blood is colde,
Though youth is moist and age is drie,
Yet embers live when flames die"................Thomas Campion.....a musician, poet and physician.16th-17th Cent.
"The physician is not just a prescriber of mdicaments but a symbol of all that is transferable from one human being to another short of immortality. We may not be able to live forever, but we persist in the notion that the physician possesses the science and the artistary that will provide us with endless deferrals. He seems to be in command of those fastness where the secret of life are stored"....................Norman Cousions....in The Healing Heart.
"When death was regarded as a metasphysic event, it commanded a kind of respect. Today when the process is long protracted it seems as evidence of failure. A dying patient is a kind of freak. It is most unacceptable of all abnormalities, an offense against nature itself....In a sense quite new to our culture, we have become ashamed of death, and we try to hide ourselves away from it. It is, in our way of thinking, failure...There is really no such thing as the agony of dying. I’m quite sure that pain is shut off at the moment of death...Something happens when the body is about to go. Peptide hormone are released by cells in the hypothalamus and pituitary glands. Endorphins. They attach themselves to the cells responsible for feeling pain...On the whole...I believe in the kindness of nature at the time of death".......................Lewis Thomas.......essayist & physician....1993.........Interviewed by Roger Rosenblatt of New York Times.
I have not become wiser by reading the book but I have become more knowledgeable.
To shout back, e-mail: mylias@tm.net.my
To Shout Back
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