Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery QUOTES

3 " It has never seemed a problem to me, only a source of awe, amazement and profound surprise that my consciousness, my very sense of self which feels as free as air, which was trying to read the book but instead was watching the clouds through the high windows, the self which is now writing these words, is in fact the electrochemical chatter of one hundred billion nerve cells. "

― Henry Marsh , Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery

4 " Психологічні дослідження стверджують, що найкоротший шлях до особистого щастя — це робити щасливими інших. Я ощасливив багатьох хворих успішними операціями, але й припустився багатьох жахливих помилок, які привнесли в моє життя, як і в життя більшості нейрохірургів, періоди глибого відчаю. "

― Генрі Марш , Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery

5 " Моїй матері пощастило вірити в життя після смерті, у мене цієї віри нема. Якщо мені не вдасться піти миттєво, єдиною втіхою для мене буде оцінка прожитого мною життя. Мені потрібно знати, що я, так само, як моя матір, не буду шкодувати за тим, як його прожив. У свої останні години, періодично втрачаючи свідомість та знову приходячи до себе, часом повертаючись до рідної німецької, вона сказала: "Це було чудове житття. Ми все сказали одне одному". "

― Генрі Марш , Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery

6 " It's the professional shame that hurts the most,' I said to him. I wheeled my bike as we walked along Fleet Street. 'Vanity really. As a neurosurgeon you have to come to terms with ruining people's lives and with making mistakes. But one still feels terrible about it and how much it will cost. "

― Henry Marsh , Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery

7 " Life without hope is hopelessly difficult but at the end hope can so easily make fools of us all. "

― Henry Marsh , Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery

8 " Neuroscience tells us that it is highly improbable that we have souls, as everything we think and feel is no more or no less than the electrochemical chatter of our nerve cells. Our sense of self, our feelings and our thoughts, our love for others, our hopes and ambitions, our hates and fears all die when our brains die. Many people deeply resent this view of things, which not only deprives us of life after death but also seems to downgrade thought to mere electrochemistry and reduces us to mere automata, to machines. Such people are profoundly mistaken, since what it really does is upgrade matter into something infinitely mysterious that we do not understand. There are one hundred billion nerve cells in our brains. Does each one have a fragment of consciousness within it? How many nerve cells do we require to be conscious or to feel pain? Or does consciousness and thought reside in the electrochemical impulses that join these billions of cells together? Is a snail aware? Does it feel pain when you crush it underfoot? Nobody knows. "

― Henry Marsh , Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery

9 " Every surgeon carries within himself a small cemetery, where from time to time he goes to pray – a place of bitterness and regret, where he must look for an explanation for his failures.’ René Leriche, La philosophie de la chirurgie, 1951 "

― Henry Marsh , Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery

10 " Healthy people, I have concluded, including myself, do not understand how everything changes once you have been diagnosed with a fatal illness. How you cling to hope, however false, however slight, and how reluctant most doctors are to deprive patients of that fragile beam of light in so much darkness. Indeed, many people develop what psychiatrists call ‘dissociation’ and a doctor can find himself talking to two people – they know that they are dying and yet still hope that they will live. I had noticed the same phenomenon with my mother during the last few days of her life. When faced by people who are dying you are no longer dealing with the rational consumers assumed by economic model-builders, if they ever existed in the first place. "

― Henry Marsh , Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery

11 " The operating is the easy part, you know,’ he said. ‘By my age you realize that the difficulties are all to do with the decision-making. "

― Henry Marsh , Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery

12 " Anxiety might be contagious, but confidence is also contagious "

― Henry Marsh , Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery

13 " Most medical students go through a brief period when they develop all manner of imaginary illnesses – I myself had leukaemia for at least four days – until they learn, as a matter of self-preservation, that illnesses happen to patients, not to doctors. "

― Henry Marsh , Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery

14 " Surgeons must always tell the truth but rarely, if ever, deprive patients of all hope. It can be very difficult to find the balance between optimism and realism. "

― Henry Marsh , Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery

15 " And now all those brain cells are dead – and my mother – who in a sense was the complex electrochemical interaction of all these millions of neurons – is no more. In neuroscience it is called ‘the binding problem’ – the extraordinary fact, which nobody can even begin to explain, that mere brute matter can give rise to consciousness and sensation. I had such a strong sensation, as she lay dying, that some deeper, ‘real’ person was still there behind the death mask. "

― Henry Marsh , Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery

16 " Hope is beyond price and the pharmaceutical companies, which are run by businessmen not altruists, price their products accordingly. "

― Henry Marsh , Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery

17 " But death is not always a bad outcome, you know, and a quick death can be better than a slow one. "

― Henry Marsh , Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery

18 " We have achieved most as surgeons when our patients recover completely and forget us completely. All patients are immensely grateful at first after a successful operation but if the gratitude persists it usually means that they have not been cured of the underlying problem and that they fear that they may need us in the future. They feel that they must placate us, as though we were angry gods or at least the agents of an unpredictable fate. "

― Henry Marsh , Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery

19 " Few people outside medicine realize that what tortures doctors most is uncertainty, rather than the fact they often deal with people who are suffering or who are about to die. It is easy enough to let somebody die if one knows beyond doubt that they cannot be saved - if one is a decent doctor one will be sympathetic, but the situation is clear. This is life, and we all have to die sooner or later. It is when I do not know for certain whether I can help or not, or should help or not, that things become so difficult. "

― Henry Marsh , Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery

20 " Psychological research has shown that the most reliable route to personal happiness is to make others happy. I have made many patients very happy with successful operations but there have been many terrible failures and most neurosurgeons’ lives are punctuated by periods of deep despair. "

― Henry Marsh , Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery