The Sorcerer’s Apprentice: Medical Miracles and Other Disasters

Gripping and provocative, this book, winner of an American Health Book Award, is unlike any you have ever read. Tisdale tells the dramatic, poignant, real-life stories of both patients and caregivers caught in the mysterious cycle of illness and health. She vividly dramatizes the struggles of ordinary people in extraordinary situations-often heroic, sometimes tragic. The book focuses on the concept of "bioethics" the relationship between medical treatment and moral dilemmas-as Tisdale enters the world of the neonatal intensive care unit, a kidney dialysis center, a burn unit, a surgery, and a cancer ward in her exploration of the often dubious high-tech miracles of modern medicine. She recognizes that medicine retains its primal edge of sorcery and that we are all its apprentices. Extraordinarily powerful, superbly written, this is a major work of popular science from an important new literary voice.