An Amazing Murmur of the Heart : Feeling the Patient's Beat

This is a searching look at the disappearance of the patient as a person from 21st century medicine, told through the stories of his many patients by the author of best-selling Suburban Shaman\*. Cecil Helman – GP, medical anthropologist and acclaimed writer – looks back on a life-time of encounters with patients to ask 'Where has the patient gone?' and answers that patients 'are still here, waiting for their doctors to notice them again, to shift their attention away from all their magic machines and high tech tests, and to listen to their stories again. And hidden away in those stories, to hear the faint, almost inaudible, murmuring of their hearts.' Whether you are on the receiving or the delivery end of health care, Cecil Helman's humane and penetrating account will open your eyes to what happens when patient and doctor meet, and how that interaction might transcend the current focus on single symptoms and test results. 'An Amazing Murmur of the Heart: Feeling the Patient's Beat' is the new book by the late Cecil Helman; GP, award-winning anthropologist, best-selling author, and mesmerizing story-teller. Through the countless stories and anecdotes about his patients and colleagues, he draws a lively picture of todays NHS, the medical profession in general and, widening the field of vision even further, of contemporary society. A question constantly emerging from Cecil Helmans stories is but where has the patient gone? A new breed of doctors is coming to the fore; in the authors words, the techno-doctor. This highly skilled individual is often someone with an overriding obsession with technology, and usually a super-specialist with an interest in only a small area of the body. A doctor who sees the body merely as a repairable machine, rather than as part of a suffering person a machine that can best be diagnosed, and then treated, only by other machines. "An Amazing Murmur of the Heart mingles ... patients' stories with Cecil's understanding that medicine is an art, though rooted in science, and that by listening to what the sick are saying - not necessarily just in words - healthcare professionals can do more than simply cure symptoms - they can heal."--Back cover