by Kelly Jad'on

Book Review: The Scalpel and the Soul (Jeremy P. Tarcher /Penguin Publishers, 2008) by Allan J. Hamilton, M.D., FACS with a forward by Andrew Weil, M.D.

The tag line for the ominously titled book The Scalpel and the Soul is: Encounters with Surgery, the Supernatural, and the Healing Power of Hope.

Author Dr. Allan Hamilton, influenced by his erudite grandfather, kept a journal since the age of 16, (20 volumes today), which helped serve as the source of many of his “medical stories” for the book. It is no wonder that Hamilton paints vivid details into the writing, illuminating not only places and times, but specific human emotions and conversations.

The Scalpel and the Soul covers a lifetime of unusual mind-body encounters Hamilton experienced and put into writing. It runs the gamut from the powerful idea of hope in a patient’s mind, to the memories of a woman who was clinically dead for 17 minutes. Probing the reader’s thoughts, one wonders, is it faith which keeps a stage IV ovarian cancer patient alive years after a terminal diagnosis, are memories stored outside the body, are we a part of a greater consciousness, and who is that light at the end of the tunnel?

Dr. Hamilton certainly doesn’t have all of the answers, but he has performed significant lifelong research as a neurosurgeon. A Harvard Medical School-educated doctor, he went on become the Chief of Neurosurgery and Chairman of the Department of Surgery at the University of Arizona Health Sciences Center. Dr. Hamilton is also a script consultant in neurosurgery for Grey’s Anatomy.

The Scalpel and the Soul offers an appendix with “Twenty Rules to Live By,” written by the author who has been both surgeon and later a patient. He has visited both sides of the operating table and knows that the number one rule is: Never underestimate luck—good or bad.

Within the covers is a chapter about a man known as Rusty, who is a patient with a brain tumor. “Much of my neurosurgical practice is devoted to brain tumors. I’ve had the honor of taking care of hundreds of patients with astrocytomas, malignant brain cancers. Very few survive for more than a couple of years…To be ‘cured’ one needs to be lucky indeed—it’s a real long shot.” Rusty “flunked out of Hospice,” and was quite surprised to find that his cancer just quit growing, while others passed on after only a short time.

Luck, Hope, Faith: All are aspects of life which influence the mind, our decisions, and fate.

Premonition, Superstition, Out of Body Experience: All are pieces of the unknown, which to most of us remain unexplained, rather a part of the supernatural.

Read The Scalpel and the Soul, whether you’re a doctor or a patient, a writer or a reader, a believer or a doubter.

5 Stars

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