The Nature of Clinical Medicine

Eric J. Cassell is an attending physician at New York Presbyterian Hospital, as well as Emeritus Professor of Public Health at Weill Cornell Medical College and Adjunct Professor of Medicine at McGill University. He retired from the active practice of internal medicine in 1998 after thirty-seven years. Cassell is the author of The Healer's Art, The Place of the Humanities in Medicine, Changing Values in Medicine, two volumes on doctor-patient communication entitled Talking with Patients and Doctoring: The Nature of Primary Care Medicine, and The Nature of Suffering and the Goals of Medicine, now in its second edition. Cassell is a Fellow of the Hastings Center, Member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, and Master of the American College of Physician.

Reading Eric Cassells latest contribution to the medical humanities The Nature of Clinical Medicine is like sipping a fine glass of claret. It requires slow savoring in order to benefit fully from the insights that Dr. Cassell has distilled over a professional lifetime of clinical practice and careful reflection. Cassells book is full of deep insights and human wisdom borne from his rewarding career of treating and caring deeply for patients.

• Acknowledgments ; Introduction ; Chapter 1. The Goals of Medicine ; Chapter 2. A Story about a Patient with Aortic Stenosis ; Chapter 3. What are Facts in Medicine? ; Chapter 4. Clarify the Chain of Events that Led to the Present State: The Case as a Narrative ; Chapter 5. The Case of Myra Manner ; Chapter 6. Examine Your Presuppositions and Preconceptions ; Chapter 7. Separate and Examine the Values at Issue ; Chapter 8. A Question of Judgment ; Chapter 9. The Patient, the Doctor, And the Relationship ; Chapter 10. Observation, Prognosis, and Prognosticating ; Chapter 11. Thinking in Medicine ; Chapter 12. Accepting the Challenge