AMAZON CUSTOMER REVIEWS

If she’s honest, every doctor will admit this is true, March 27, 2006 Reviewer: DJE (Williamstown, MA USA)

‘Jan Luydik haunts me. If he’s honest, every doctor will admit to such a patient. Jan’s one of the reasons I want to leave general practice.” Susan Butler’s “Secrets from the Black Bag” (SBB) is a collection of 33 quirky, fascinating stories about general physicians from the far-flung corners of the world. This is a great book for any health care professional, especially recommend for medical students and house staff who could use a dram of humility. Butler’s doctors are honest, straight-talking chaps; not gods or goddesses, but humble people trying to do difficult jobs and often screwing up. One senses that Butler stands on the shoulders of writers like William Carlos Williams. SBB is an antidote to the preachy popular medical literature we read today; omniscient tales of self-styled experts. Compared to these, Butler is curiously refreshing. SBB is best taken in doses of two to three stories a day (like any good medicine.) One needs a bit of time to absorb the tart unsentimental messages. Ms. Butler’s SBB has earned a place on my bookshelf next to Williams’ “The Doctor Stories” and John Berger’s “A Fortunate Man.” Highly recommended to anyone interested to what lies at the heart of medicine.

With heart and head, March 17, 2006 Reviewer: Professor John M. Last (Ottawa, Ontario Canada)

Stories about doctors and their patients fascinate everybody, including doctors themselves, and many famous literary works demonstrate how they can be widely told without violating the confidentiality of the doctor-patient relationship. Susan Woldenberg Butler, a doctor’s wife, has collected many moving stories from her husband’s colleagues, disguised them elegantly within a fictional framework, and presented them in this delightful book. Many doctors (and their spouses) will find it enlightening as well as entertaining and many patients will get some insight into the satisfactions, tensions, frustrations, and heartbreaks of front-line doctoring in all corners of the world.