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(14 reviews) Author: Visit Amazon's Jason Karlawish Page ISBN : 9780472118014 New from $16.74 Format: PDF
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"The relationship between doctor and patient is hard enough to parse when both are in the same room. …And of the gallons of ink spilled over the centuries in attempts at clarification, few efforts in recent memory lay out the frustrations and confusions and crystalline moments of grace better than Dr. Jason Karlawish's marvelous new book Open Wound."
--- Abigail Zuger, M.D., New York Times
"After a fur trapper is shot in an accident in northern Michigan in 1822, Dr. William Beaumont, an army surgeon, fought to treat the young man despite pressure not to run up a tab doing so. But what appears to be altruism develops into something far more complicated as the open stomach wound of Beaumont's patient, Alexis St. Martin, proves scientifically useful to the doctor and potentially to millions of other patients. In this historical novel, the two become entwined in each other's lives medically, financially and even legally. Karlawish sketches their fraught relationship in the ensuing decades artfully, with clear relevance to the ethical questions of modern medicine."
--- Kristen Gerencher, The Wall Street Journal
"Novels based on true stories can be challenging to write because authors must work that much harder, but Dr. Karlawish, a professor of medicine and medical ethics, has succeeded admirably. I recommend this well-written and fascinating book to anyone interested in early medicine."
--- Susan Zabolotny, The Historical Novel Review
"This is an excellent historical novel, so real that the biting winds of the western frontier seem to flutter across its pages and cool our sweaty brows. Within this, however, is something much more profound---a dark and gripping morality play about friendship, ambition, and the very essence of what it means to be a doctor. This should be required reading in medical schools. I will not soon forget this book."
--- Jake Halpern, author of Fame Junkies and commentator for NPR's All Things Considered
"The ethical questions that envelop Doctor Beaumont and his patient are here laid bare for all to see---sliced through by Karlawish's sharp scalpel of finely-honed research . . . One can't judge this tale without pondering the possible experimental horrors our own bones and flesh might be enduring in our own time."
--- Jackson Taylor, author of The Blue Orchard
"This is a remarkable story, compellingly written, of how one man's ambition brings him both the fame he coveted and crushing failure. The propriety of a physician treating his patient as a living laboratory and as an avenue to personal glory is set down for the reader to judge. Beaumont was a man both desperate and delusional, yet one who advanced medical science albeit with questionable methods. A provocative read from cover to cover."
--- Don Faber, author of The Toledo War
"A highly readable and plausible reconstruction of the medical and personal interaction between St. Martin and Beaumont."
--- Richard Selzer, surgeon and author of Mortal Lessons: Notes on the Art of Surgery and the novel Knife Song Korea
"Open Wound is a fascinating novel about scientific ambition on the American frontier. Read this fine book for its meticulous reconstruction of nineteenth-century life, and for its evocative portrait of a medical researcher whose hunger for success leads him down an ethically dubious path."
--- Karl Iagnemma, author of The Expeditions
"Karlawish offers us a nuanced cautionary tale. He demonstrates how an ethical person can slip—how easily those with power and high standing can take advantage of the sick and the poor. More intriguingly, Open Wound raises questions about fundamental American values like freedom, equality, progress, and ambition—and whether they can truly coexist."
--- Kayla Rosen, The Penn Gazette.
"Open Wound is an enjoyable book that is not only a fascinating fictionalized biography of one of America’s great medical pioneers, but is also an exploration of the complicated relationship between doctor and patient when it becomes transgressive. Saving St Martin may have been Beaumont’s greatest success as a physician, but St Martin became first his indentured servant and later his nemesis. Karlawish, a physician and ethicist at the University of Pennsylvania, has crafted an excellent work of fiction with the power to illuminate difficult ethical issues, perhaps giving Beaumont a new fame and notoriety—this time as a cautionary figure in medical history."
-- Noah Raizman, The Lancet
--- Abigail Zuger, M.D., New York Times
"After a fur trapper is shot in an accident in northern Michigan in 1822, Dr. William Beaumont, an army surgeon, fought to treat the young man despite pressure not to run up a tab doing so. But what appears to be altruism develops into something far more complicated as the open stomach wound of Beaumont's patient, Alexis St. Martin, proves scientifically useful to the doctor and potentially to millions of other patients. In this historical novel, the two become entwined in each other's lives medically, financially and even legally. Karlawish sketches their fraught relationship in the ensuing decades artfully, with clear relevance to the ethical questions of modern medicine."
--- Kristen Gerencher, The Wall Street Journal
"Novels based on true stories can be challenging to write because authors must work that much harder, but Dr. Karlawish, a professor of medicine and medical ethics, has succeeded admirably. I recommend this well-written and fascinating book to anyone interested in early medicine."
--- Susan Zabolotny, The Historical Novel Review
"This is an excellent historical novel, so real that the biting winds of the western frontier seem to flutter across its pages and cool our sweaty brows. Within this, however, is something much more profound---a dark and gripping morality play about friendship, ambition, and the very essence of what it means to be a doctor. This should be required reading in medical schools. I will not soon forget this book."
--- Jake Halpern, author of Fame Junkies and commentator for NPR's All Things Considered
"The ethical questions that envelop Doctor Beaumont and his patient are here laid bare for all to see---sliced through by Karlawish's sharp scalpel of finely-honed research . . . One can't judge this tale without pondering the possible experimental horrors our own bones and flesh might be enduring in our own time."
--- Jackson Taylor, author of The Blue Orchard
"This is a remarkable story, compellingly written, of how one man's ambition brings him both the fame he coveted and crushing failure. The propriety of a physician treating his patient as a living laboratory and as an avenue to personal glory is set down for the reader to judge. Beaumont was a man both desperate and delusional, yet one who advanced medical science albeit with questionable methods. A provocative read from cover to cover."
--- Don Faber, author of The Toledo War
"A highly readable and plausible reconstruction of the medical and personal interaction between St. Martin and Beaumont."
--- Richard Selzer, surgeon and author of Mortal Lessons: Notes on the Art of Surgery and the novel Knife Song Korea
"Open Wound is a fascinating novel about scientific ambition on the American frontier. Read this fine book for its meticulous reconstruction of nineteenth-century life, and for its evocative portrait of a medical researcher whose hunger for success leads him down an ethically dubious path."
--- Karl Iagnemma, author of The Expeditions
"Karlawish offers us a nuanced cautionary tale. He demonstrates how an ethical person can slip—how easily those with power and high standing can take advantage of the sick and the poor. More intriguingly, Open Wound raises questions about fundamental American values like freedom, equality, progress, and ambition—and whether they can truly coexist."
--- Kayla Rosen, The Penn Gazette.
"Open Wound is an enjoyable book that is not only a fascinating fictionalized biography of one of America’s great medical pioneers, but is also an exploration of the complicated relationship between doctor and patient when it becomes transgressive. Saving St Martin may have been Beaumont’s greatest success as a physician, but St Martin became first his indentured servant and later his nemesis. Karlawish, a physician and ethicist at the University of Pennsylvania, has crafted an excellent work of fiction with the power to illuminate difficult ethical issues, perhaps giving Beaumont a new fame and notoriety—this time as a cautionary figure in medical history."
-- Noah Raizman, The Lancet
About the Author
Jason Karlawish is a Professor of Medicine, Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania.
- Hardcover: 280 pages
- Publisher: University of Michigan Press/Regional; 1 edition (August 30, 2011)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0472118013
- ISBN-13: 978-0472118014
- Product Dimensions: 1.1 x 6.3 x 9.2 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Open Wound: The Tragic Obsession of Dr. William Beaumont PDF
This book was very well written. I had heard of Dr. Beaumont before and had always been interested in how his patient had come to have a hole in his stomach. Mr. Karlawish did an excellent job of bringing this piece of history to life. I was virtually transported back to 1822, and the years that followed, to witness Dr. Beaumont and Alexis St. Martin's often troubled interactions. I say interactions, because they were never truly friends. A friendship requires a form of respect on each side of the fence, and while Alexis had some respect to an extent for Dr. Beaumont, Beaumont never really respect Alexis at all. However not respecting Alexis doesn't necessarily make Beaumont a bad man. Raised in the time period that he was, no one of that time period would fault him for looking at Alexis as more of a scientific breakthrough than an actual man. You have to remember this was when slavery was still common place, American Indians were all assumed to be savages and Alexi being an indentured fur trapper made him only a step higher on the social ladder of the time. Even with this outlook, Beaumont does still try to morally educate Alexis. He gives him work in exchange for his medical treatment and a place to stay. He also buys Alexi's contract from the fur company, thereby making him a free man. (however later he does basically put him back into being an indentured servant, albeit by a different name) But Alexi is young, while he idolizes the doctor for saving him, he also wants to have a life and not be constantly poked and prodded at. This leads to a constant source of problems for both of the men.
Along with the other multitude of sins they are guilty of, both men are extremely greedy. Beaumont even more so than Alexis. Alexis simply wants to be able to make an easy buck.
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