Rating: 4 out of 5

Very readable. Very interesting. I love the final paragraph from the afterword (not a spoiler):

‪“With the rise of technological medicines and all its wonders, it is equally important to preserve the personal narrative, to see every patient as a unique being with his own history and strategies for adapting and surviving. Though the technical terms may evolve and change, the phenomenology of human sickness and health remains fairly constant, and case history, careful and detailed descriptions of individual patients, can never become obselete.”‬

This feels so very true. We are all people, individuals with our quirks and our likes and dislikes. We need to be seen as people, to be reviewed as a person with a backstory. Not just a set of symptoms.

Highlighted passage:

A quote by Luis Bunuet: You have to begin to lose your memory, and if only in bits and pieces, to realise that memory is what makes our lives. Life without memory is no life at all. Our memory is our coherence, our reason, our feeling, even our action. Without it, we are nothing

Originally posted to my Goodreads account