One might expect the autobiography of a pioneer of neurosurgery in Britain, but this book is not it. Altogether, the fragments of information about his own life that Marsh lets fall would come to less than five pages. Instead, the book is a lament or, if you like, a vivid presentation of the patients, usually seriously ill, faced with the NHS system, and a team of doctors who step in to solve problems that the management cannot deal with. In other words, medicine as a job.
The book reveals the difficulties without offering any solutions, and the Hippocratic principle of “First, do no harm” is interpreted as a recommendation not to intervene if the patient may end up worse off, or be left with a disability that would make their life still more complicated. The book is permeated by the despair of a doctor who does not believe in anything, who has always seen “the mind/brain problem” as “a waste of time”, and for whom “neuroscience tells us that it is highly improbable that we have souls”; who cannot understand the generosity of those who dedicate their lives to the hopelessly sick for love of Christ; and who, looking at his mother after her death, only sees that “the complex electrochemical interaction of all these millions of neurons – is no more”. The brain and the human person are nothing more than the interconnection of millions of neurons, although a breath of hope remains: there are still some things that have not been explained. At the very least, there is “‘the binding problem’ – the extraordinary fact, which nobody can even begin to explain, that mere brute matter can give rise to consciousness and sensation.” Each chapter bears the name of a different pathology, meaning that the book is not recommended for hypochondriacs!
F. F. (Spain, 2016)