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Title: Five Patients by MICHAEL CRICHTON ISBN: 0-345-35464-8 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 13 January, 1989 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 2.7 (20 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Solid Informational Novel
Comment: I am an enourmous fan of the TV show ER. Everyone knows that Michael Crichton created ER so when i finally found a copy of Five Patients, (the book is extremly hard to find), I quickly grabbed it off the shelf and bought it. I thought that it would be like reading an episode of ER. Boy was a wrong, but wrong in a good way. For each patient Crichton takes up between 45-60 pages. Only 10-12 of those pages are about the patient themself. The rest is information, not on medicine, but how the hospital has changed throughout the years. From surgery to cost to medicine itself. I enjoyed the information tremendously. And as anyone who reads my reviews knows, sometimes I'm not a big fan of an entire novel being informational.(Congo) But Five Patients is different. It taught me stuff about the hospital I didn't know, and added on to the stuff I already knew. However by the final patient, Edith Murphy, the information was something I already knew so that took a little away. But only a little. By reading this book, I can see my I enjoy ER so much. It's the best show on television in my opinion. Five Patients is true nonfiction work.
Rating: 3
Summary: Don't expect ER
Comment: You will probably have the wrong impression of what this book consists of before you read it; I did. Some may think, or hope, that it is an ER-type medical thriller. It is not. Some, as I did, may think that it takes the cases of five individual patients and goes into a detailed description of how they were treated and cured. It does not. What the book actually does consist of is a series of five separate medical cases that are used to illustrate larger aspects of the hospital in general. The five cases average about 30 pages apiece, with about 4 or 5 pages of that going into the actual details of the case. The book is somewhat interesting: it goes into detail about the inner workings of a hospital that those outside of the medical profession probably know next to nothing about. This glimpse into the academic medical community is informative and makes for fairly interesting reading. The writing is dry and formal, often quite technical, which will, no doubt, turn off those who read Crichton merely for his page-turning suspense. Though the book has its merits, as mentioned above, one is ever aware, while reading it, that the book was written in 1969. Though some points of it are still valid and interesting, and Crichton's writing is always worth reading, it is inescapably quite outdated. One may get the most out of it by using it as a snapshot of how medicine was 30+ years ago. Of course, at any rate, this is a minor work in Crichton's canon. Reccommended only for hard-core fans of the author and perhaps medical historians looking for an objective look at medicine during the late 60's.
Rating: 3
Summary: Not a must for Crichton fan, but still a good book
Comment: I was somehow misled by the title. I thought I was going to read five short stories of how doctor can treat (miraculously) five difficult patients, those I would read in Reader's Digest. But no, indeed I was surpised that those five patients are only mentioned in 1/5 of the book. The rest 4/5 of the book are talking about everything about hospital - its history, budget, organizational structure, politics, teaching versus community hospital, surgeon, urine, anaesthesia.....
I find most of these medical topics are interesting, though some are somewhat outdated. Also, I admire Mr. Crichton's writing skill to interweave these different topics together in a 200-page book.
My recommedation - do not treat it as a fiction. It is not that a waste of time (onlyl 200 pages!!)
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Title: Kill As Few Patients As Possible by Oscar London ISBN: 089815197X Publisher: Ten Speed Press Pub. Date: May, 1987 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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Title: Love, Greg & Lauren by Greg Manning ISBN: 055338189X Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 13 August, 2002 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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Title: Gifted Hands by Benjamin S., Sr. Carson, Cecil Murphey ISBN: 0310214696 Publisher: Zondervan Pub. Date: 08 December, 1996 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
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Title: A Case of Need by Michael Crichton, Jeffery Hudson ISBN: 0451210638 Publisher: Signet Pub. Date: 05 August, 2003 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson by Mitch Albom ISBN: 076790592X Publisher: Broadway Pub. Date: 08 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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