As a doctor, I am drawn to non-fiction books about medicine written in lay language. My all-time favorite is Siddhartha Mukherjee’s Emperor of All Maladies, the biography of cancer. James Forrester’s Heart Healers now sits beside it on my shelf of medical classics. It is the Emperor’s bookend, written about heart disease.
Forrester’s book is an unvarnished eyewitness to an incredible era of history, since he was both an observer and an important participant in what he calls “the greatest medical breakthrough of our times.” While that title initially smacks of potential whopping overstatement, I believe most readers as they read the last page will take a deep breath and say to themselves “that’s a truly amazing story.”
What makes Forrester’s story unique is that it reads just like page-turning mystery-thriller fiction. Because we are constantly asking ourselves what’s going to happen next, it’s difficult to put down. Combine that with the fact that as the story catapults forward, he unfolds a drama of dying real people snatched back from death and heartbreaking stories of real lives lost. Over and over I found myself “choked up” as I became involved in his patient stories.
In the midst of the tumult and chaos of medical success and failure that he describes stands a group of doctors he labels “mavericks and misfits.” As I was swept along from one insurmountable problem to another amazing solution, I had not the slightest doubt that this part of the title Forrester chose for his book is also spot on. Without pushing the point or making judgments, he makes a compelling case that the cascade of breakthroughs he describes were driven by doctors whose creativity seemed closely linked to their sometimes egregious risk-taking and their rebellious natures.
In addition to his terrific story, as a doctor I also appreciate how Forrester, like Mukherjee, often gently plants profound ideas and questions for the general public to think about. Among these ideas are that people “always” die in the course of medical progress, and that we learn more from our mistakes than our successes. Another intriguing unanswered question is whether the astonishing medical advances he describes could occur in today’s regulatory environment.
As he enters the present and future, Forrester offers one final provocative question: could heart disease, which currently rules the roost as our nation’s number one killer, be deposed by the end of this decade? He says it will and he tells us why.
Comparing these two outstanding books, each has its special merits. I would say Mukherjee’s writing is somewhat more scholarly and literary with interesting metaphors, Forrester’s writing has more dramatic tension and pace, and his characters are quite a bit more emotionally engaging. The importance of Forrester’s topic, the drama that percolates through every page, and the simplicity and clarity of his explanations for a lay reader make Heart Healers the best medical book that I have read.
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GREAT INSPIRATIONAL book has written by Dr James Forrester
Reviewed in Canada on November 6, 2016