Offers an account of life in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of a major inner-city hospital, San Francisco. This book presents the stories of patients who show up with myriad disorders: asthma, cardiac failure, gastrointestinal diseases, complications due to AIDS, the effects of drug and alcohol abuse, and, emphysema.
"This is an excellent book, full of this eminent doctor's expertise, and his never-failing compassion for his ramshackle alcoholic and drug-addicted patients. San Francisco General Hospital is famous for its care of the disadvantaged who are not wanted in private hospitals. . . . I predict that this book may well become a classic of its kind."-Carolyn Kizer, author of The Nearness of You
"I started this book skeptical about reading yet another doctor's story--but once into it, I read straight through with great interest and deep appreciation. Writing lucidly, engagingly, and often eloquently, Murray uses his month's tour of duty as senior physician to the intensive care unit of an academic hospital in San Francisco as a prism. Through it he lays out a spectrum of the elements of modern medicine's art and science and shares his thoughtful insights into the ethical, economic, and human overtones of caring for sick people in today's society."-Leonard Laster, author of Life After Medical School
