The Way of the Physician: Recovering the Heart of Medicine

In a time when the greatest controversy of medical care seems to be about how best to pay for it, philosopher Jacob Needleman returns our attention to fundamental questions of what makes a true healer, what’s involved in the uniquely intimate relationship of doctor and patient, and how we all face the inevitable challenges of maintaining health, dealing with illness, and dying.Medicine for the practitioner and the patient alike, this book says that we need to train doctors to be wise healers working on the heart, not mechanics who fix bodies. Carrying resonances of Robert M. Pirsig’s classic standard Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, it points to the physician’s quest, now, as our own: to rediscover the moral wonder that will enable us “to do the right thing and do it well.””As Robert Pirsig did, Jacob Needleman has taken an elusive set of ideas and made of them a drama that even the hidebound materialist is bound to attend.” –The New York Times”His arguments are poetic and persuasive.” — Kirkus Review