Five Patients : The Hospital Explained

by Michael Crichton

"Crichton has an extraordinary capacity to seize upon, then make real and personal, the new and the complex, the intriguing and the frighening."
THE NATION
In this incisive, detailed survey of five patients, famous thriller author and doctor Michael Crichton explores the dramatic workings of Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston's oldest and most prestigious.
This readable account covers not only the history of the hospital's place in society, but also the actual minute-to-minute functions of Mass General, where health professionals wage their daily battle against disease and death. Crichton's insightful look at the changes in medicine and surgery caused by technological strides of recent years makes for amazing reading.

Genres: Nonfiction, Medical, Medicine, Science, Thriller, Memoir, Mystery

Library Binding

First published June 1, 1970

About the author

John Michael Crichton was an American author, screenwriter, and filmmaker whose prolific career left an indelible mark on popular culture and speculative fiction. Raised on Long Island, he displayed a precocious talent for writing, publishing an article in The New York Times at sixteen. Initially enrolling at Harvard as an English major, he switched to biological anthropology after discovering a preference for scientific study over literature. He graduated summa cum laude and received a fellowship to lecture in anthropology at Cambridge. Later attending Harvard Medical School, he earned his MD but chose not to practice, dedicating himself to writing instead. His medical background profoundly influenced his novels, providing authentic scientific and technical underpinnings that became a hallmark of his work. Crichton began writing under pseudonyms, producing suspenseful thrillers as John Lange, including Odds On, Scratch One, and Easy Go, and as Jeffrey Hudson with A Case of Need, earning him an Edgar Award. His first major success under his own name, The Andromeda Strain, established his signature blend of scientific authenticity, tension, and exploration of technological hazards, leading to its film adaptation. Over his career, he wrote 25 novels, including The Terminal Man, The Great Train Robbery, Congo, Sphere, Jurassic Park, Rising Sun, Disclosure, The Lost World, Airframe, Timeline, Prey, State of Fear, and Next, several adapted into major films, with four additional works published posthumously. Crichton also made significant contributions to film and television. He wrote and directed Westworld, pioneering the use of 2D computer-generated imagery, and later directed Coma, The First Great Train Robbery, Looker, and Runaway. He created the influential medical drama ER, which he executive produced and developed with Steven Spielberg, achieving critical and commercial success. Many of his novels, most famously Jurassic Park and its sequel The Lost World, became cultural phenomena, combining imaginative adventure with grounded scientific speculation, often exploring humanity’s overreach in genetics, biotechnology, and complex systems. His literary style was notable for integrating meticulous scientific detail, suspense, and moral cautionary themes. His works frequently addressed the failure of complex systems—biological, technological, or organizational—demonstrating the unpredictable consequences of human hubris. Employing techniques such as first-person narratives, false documents, fictionalized scientific reports, and assembling expert teams to tackle crises, Crichton created immersive stories appealing to both popular and scholarly audiences. His exploration of genetics, paleontology, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence revealed both fascination and caution about humanity’s technological ambitions, while his early non-fiction, such as Five Patients and Electronic Life, reflected his scientific insight and forward-thinking approach to computers and programming. Standing 6 feet 9 inches tall, Crichton experienced social isolation in adolescence and later pursued meditation and consultations with psychics, cultivating a lifelong interest in human consciousness and alternative experiences. A workaholic, he approached writing with disciplined ritualistic methodology, often retreating entirely to complete a novel in six or seven weeks. He was married five times, fathered two children, and maintained a wide-ranging collection of 20th-century American art. Crichton engaged in political and scientific discourse, particularly regarding global warming, where he was an outspoken skeptic and testified before the U.S. Senate. He contributed significantly to the discussion of intellectual property, technology, and environmental policy, coining concepts such as the Gell-Mann amnesia effect. Throughout his life, he received numerous awards, including Edgar Awards, a Peabody Award for ER, an Aca

Reviews

[RJ - Slayer of Trolls · Rating 3 out of 5]

Michael Crichton started his career as a medical student but veered towards writing as he became more and more dissatisfied with his chosen profession (see: Travels for more info). Five Patients, one of his earliest works and one of his handful of non-fiction books, is not only a look at a modern (in 1970) hospital but also serves as Crichton's denunciation of some troubling problems in the practice of medicine. Crichton's research is thorough as always and some of the sections pertaining to medical history are captivating. Forty-seven years have passed so some of the stories lack relevance although some are still quite entertaining. If any of the material seems familiar, keep in mind that Crichton drew upon these experiences when he co-created the TV show ER.

[Kyriakos Sorokkou]

Διαβάστε και την ελληνική κριτική στις βιβλιοαλχημείες.

Five Patients was Crichton's first non-fiction book I read this year. He wrote four in total. I read his other two last July (Electronic Life: How to Think About Computers & Travels) and I'm still hunting down his most rare one Jasper Johns.

This book, as the title indicates tells the true stories of five patients at Massachusetts General Hospital, all admitted while Crichton was a medical student there.

This book tells Crichton's experiences as a doctor, the history of Massachusetts General Hospital, the general history of American medicine and hospitals,and of course, as I mentioned earlier, the personal stories of five patients their life and medical problems.

From the back cover's blurb:
«A construction worker is seriously injured in a scaffold collapse; a middle-aged dispatcher is brought in suffering from a fever that has reduced him to a delirious wreck; a young man nearly severs his hand in an accident; an airline traveller suffers chest pains; a mother of three is diagnosed with a life-threatening disease.»

These stories, and Crichton's experiences as a medical student and doctor in general, served as the main inspiration for his drama E.R. George Clooney was a protagonist in the 1st out of 15 seasons.

Even though I'm not a fan of medical dramas and medical non-fiction, I'm a fan of Crichton, so I ended up reading this book.
It also includes a 7-pages glossary and ten pages of bibliography, showing once more Crichton's dedication on each of his works.

I can't say I loved it, but it was certainly a great experience and of course I'm glad I have one more Crichton in my possession.

[Book Concierge · Rating 3 out of 5]

From the back cover: A construction worker in his fifties is seriously injured in the collapse of a scaffold. A middle-aged railroad dispatcher develops a high fever that makes him wildly delirious. A young worker nearly severs his hand from his arm in an accident. A woman traveling alone has persistent chest pain and is treated by a doctor on a TV screen. A mother of three is diagnosed with a life-threatening disease.

My reactions
These five patients’ cases are used to illustrate the workings of a large academic medical center: Massachusetts General Hospital. Crichton, best known for thrillers and the TV show E.R., wrote this nonfiction explanation of how a hospital works when he was barely out of medical school himself – November 1969. I happened to get a 25th anniversary edition, which includes a “new” Author’s Note dated 1994. In that forward he writes: “When I reread the book recently, I was struck by how much in medicine has changed – and also, by how much has not changed. Eventually I decided not to revise the text, but to let it stand as a statement of what medical practice was like in the late 1960s, and how issues in health care were perceived at that time.”

Another twenty years have gone by and Crichton’s comments still ring true. Much has changed, and much remains the same. The system of training new physicians has changed little, though residents no longer have the gruelingly long hours that were the norm when Crichton was writing. Technological advances have certainly changed the way in which certain services are delivered, but third-party payers (i.e. insurance companies, including government programs such as Medicare) have much more to say about what services the patient receives and how. (A friend recently had a mastectomy as an outpatient procedure!)

So, while this work is obviously dated, I still found it interesting.

[Thalia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Expected a dramatic retelling of patients' stories as described by the blurb, I was pleasantly surprised that this was more expository on themes surrounding Medicine such as history, financial costs/ insurance, technology and the hierarchy of residents. It was fascinating that a book written in the 70s had similar issues as today. Overall, a great read for me.

[Oli Turner · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s an annual tradition of mine to read a michael Crichton novel at Christmas. I am making my way through his early work. #fivepatients (a non-fiction account from his medical days originally published in 1970) is a fascinating examination of the American healthcare system and a brief guide to the history of medicine as well as an introduction to how a hospital operates in practice. The more things change the more things stay the same. @michaelcrichton_official #michaelcrichton
was often ahead of his time. This particular edition features an authors note from 1994, which almost laments some of the technology that was breaking through in the late 1960s but hadn’t yet come to fruition in 1994. But another 30 years later and Crichton is proven right once again as those particular technologies (AI and computer assisted diagnosis and examination) are really getting more traction. Some of Crichton’s criticisms and concerns about the cost of medical treatment are even more relevant today.

[Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was really terrific :o) It was written in 1970 maybe (?) but his style as ever is compelling. It was super interesting to read what he envisioned as the future of medicine and hospitals. At the time he wrote this the first 'tele medicine' was being practiced at an airport terminal and computers were just starting to be used ... Fascinating book - I'm keeping it and may reread it sometime in the future

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an enlightening view of the inner workings of a teaching hospital, even though it is now several decades old. I is easy to see how methods, technology, and improved knowledge have changed the problems but some do still exist. I would be interested in hearing what this author thinks of today's hospitals.

[Ardon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I actually didn’t realise that Michael Crichton had ever done any medical books - admittedly he’s best known for Jurassic Park, so perhaps I only had him shelved as a sci-fi writer in my head.

For whatever reason, I’ve been rewatching ER lately, and I discovered that Crichton (who wrote the show) had also written this, an account of 5 specific patients he saw as a fourth year Harvard medical student.

It honestly reminded me of the same sort of hustle and bustle one sees in an episode of ER, so I really liked this side of the book. However, the book is very much dated - it was written in the late 60s, so much of Crichton’s coverage of contemporary issues with American healthcare are a bit anachronistic, but interesting nonetheless.

[Andreas Schmidt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Il germoglio da cui è nata la serie E.R. Nella realtà si tratta di un lavoro di raccolta dati molto ben romanzato.

[Hayden Fuchino · Rating 3 out of 5]

3/5 Stars.
Mostly an examination of the state of medicine in 1970. Surprisingly prescient about the role of computers and money. Not nearly as much about individual cases as I was expecting.

[BradMD · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not a great book for me, but if I remember correctly this was very early in his writing career.

[Will Eubanks · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'd heard several people complain that this book was outdated. Yes... that is the entire point of reading it in 2021. If you'd like a take on current medicine, read a current book (or read the foreword). Part of the charm of reading Five Patients is looking back 50 years, especially for us young folk. Not all of Crichton's predictions are accurate (who could expect them to be?), but give a solid idea of the state of medicine and its practitioners at the time.

The dividing of the book into five sections for five patients, and more importantly five different topics in medicine (general hospital history, cost of healthcare, history of surgery, technology in the medical field, and medical education, respectively), works fairly well, but Crichton fails to consistently tie each patient's story to the topic to which he devotes each chapter. I wonder how well Five Patients would read split into two different books: one telling the stories of each patient, and another a collection of essays about the state of medicine in 1969.

[Veronica - I need a husband, to have a fancy last name · Rating 1 out of 5]

Szczerze? Nie polecam 😩
Ponad połowę przewijałam bez jakiegokolwiek skupienia (tylko po to, żeby mieć ją skończoną skoro jest mega krótka...) (I tak, wiem pan profesor mówił, że życie jest krótkie, więc trzeba czytać same najlepsze książki - I ZGADZAM SIĘ. Ale to już był akt desperacji. Kwestia mojej dumy i honoru itp itd. +no jak już pisałam - było to bardzo krótkie, więc uznajmy, że mało czasu zmarnowałam)
***
Bo jakby... To jest bardzo dziwna książka. Trochę jakby ktoś (I mean Crichton) dosłownie zrobił kopiuj+wklej dokumentacji medycznej. Trochę wkleił fragmentów z rozmów z pacjentami. I trochę dodał randomowej historii medycyny.
Czyli ogólnie jeden wielki chaos w sercu i nudy jak ma się z tym do czynienia na co dzień (I mean tu nudy, normalne rozmowy z pacjentami i czytanie ich dokumentacji są super 😌)
***
Także jak ogarniać coś związanego z "ER" to lepiej obejrzeć serial (i przymknąć oko na ich defibrylację PEA i asystolii 💀)

[Kathy Hiester · Rating 4 out of 5]

I work in the healthcare field and I thought that I was getting a fiction book my Michael Crichton. Imagine my surprise when I realized that I had a nonfiction and interesting read. The funny part is that I had no clue that this author actually created the TV series ER. The story encompasses five patients, a construction worker in his fifties who is seriously injured in the collapse of a scaffold, a middle-aged railroad dispatcher who develops a high fever that makes him wildly delirious, a young worker that nearly severs his hand from his arm in an accident, a woman who while traveling alone develops persistent chest pain and is treated by a doctor on a TV screen and a mother of three who is diagnosed with a life-threatening disease. Five Patients has abundant detail, decent medical knowledge and insight into the health care business all told in layman’s terms.
4 Stars

[Karschtl · Rating 2 out of 5]

Die Vorlage für die TV-Serie "Emergency Room". Allerdings haben diese beiden Sachen - außer der Idee - nichts weiter miteinander zu tun.
Stattdessen beschreibt der Autor, der einst selbst Medizin studierte bevor er ein Bestseller-Autor wurde, wie das Leben in einer Notaufnahme ist. Zu diesem Zweck werden die Fälle von fünf verschiedenen Patienten geschildert. Neueste medizinische Entwicklungen kommen ebenso zur Sprache wie das Sozialsystem der USA. Das ganze ist in einem sehr dokumentarischen Stil geschrieben (obwohl es auch gut möglich ist, dass die Fälle in dieser Form vollständig erfunden sind.)

Zu bedenken ist: dieses Buch wurde erstmals 1970 veröffentlicht, und daher sind die "neuesten Entwicklungen" für uns gar nicht mehr so neu.

[Aparna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I remember getting this from my library since a friend recommended it to me. I have always found medicine a very interesting field (only to read about, though), and my first surprise was how easy this book was to read. And the second surprise was how the statistics have been presented, to represent healthcare as an industry. It reminds the reader that although intentions may be noble, no profession exists for the sole cause of charity. It also reminds you that a hospital is not a non-profit place, and why its in the patient's best interest that it remain that way.

This book made me feel a whole lot smarter, and gave me more insight to an industry I knew nothing about but will be involved with for as long as I am alive.

[h · Rating 3 out of 5]

My first non-fiction work of Mister Crichton. I plowed through his fiction works in my (very) early twenties, originally borrowing them from a co-worker. After I ran through his collection, I went on to buying my own used Crichton books until I was pretty much out of options.

I picked up Five Patients at Goodwill for fifty cents on half price Saturday. Moving through it pretty quickly, I was swept away by the stories included in it, and even more so, I was taken in by just how much WORSE our health care system in America has become since Five Patients was published.

It's an eye opening read, certainly.

[David Meyer]

A fascinating look into the world of a hospital. It is not so much a look at 5 interesting cases as much as it is a look at the way though cases effect the surrounding environment of the hospital itself. This is all accompanied by interesting looks into the history of how this all came to be.

[Kirsten Karlen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Earlier Michael Crichton, an interesting read. Despite being so pop-culture, I have to admit a weakness for MC because he's a science nerd and so am I. :)

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

This gives you an interesting insight into his medical years. It was interesting.

[Lenny Husen · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.0, Dr. Crichton was a Harvard Medical Student who then trained at Massachusetts General Hospital, back in the 1960's. So this book is non-fiction and rather dull unfortunately but not a hard read.
This is an accurate description of the state of medicine and care at teaching hospitals in 1968. As a Hospitalist, I appreciated it. But I cannot in good conscience recommend this to anyone who isn't a Hospital Medicine specialist.
Each chapter starts out discussing a different patient's case for about 5 pages, followed by about 25 more pages of an essay on Crichton's predictions for the future (many are quite accurate) and thoughts on pros and cons of Hospital treatment. He also discusses the history of the MGH which is modestly interesting.
Passage I liked:
"It is quite possible to forget that the hospital stands in the midst of a larger community, and that the final goal of hospitalization is reintegration of the patient into that community. In this respect, the hospital is like two other institutions which have a partially custodial function, schools and prisons. In each case, success is best measured not by the performance of the individual within that system, but after he leaves it."
I have had that same thought. Patients who are self-willed individuals do poorly in institutions.
I think nowadays the focus is on discharge within 3 to 4 days and the patient being well enough to not be readmitted within the next 2 months.
"People have recognized for a long time that hospitals are designed for the patient's needs only when those needs do not conflict with the doctors' convenience." I would add also the convenience of the nursing staff and administration and the politics inherent in running an institution 24/7 somewhat effectively."
"The hospital is difficult to adapt to. It brings in individuals from outside, and plunges them into a totally new existence, with new schedules, new food, new rules, new clothing, new language, new sounds and smells, fears and rewards."
I am SO empathetic of my patients. It is brutally hard to be in a hospital. My worst day working in one is nothing in comparison to what many inpatients have to deal with.
"Colors are bland but instead of being restful, are more often depressing; space is badly distributed, so that a patient may be stranded in a large room or croweded in a small one."
Yeah, still is like that in many hospitals. This is why I wanted to personally spend large sums of money buy large framed nature photos of gorgeous scenery or gorgeous animals or other beautiful photos of local landmarks. But when I offered, I was bluntly and rudely rejected. (The Engineer Tim Somebody turned out to be a malignant person who hurt me and damaged me by his sheer awfulness. Still makes me feel sick to think of how he treated me and probably others.)
But some hospitals do display wonderful photos and deserve praise (Hershey Medical Center, Alta Bates in Berkeley). Many more do not. I am appalled at the poor excuses for "artwork" that make it up on a hospital wall.
"The hospital makes psychological demands that may retard recovery. According to Stanley King, these may include dependence and compliance with hospital routine; a de-emphasis on external power and prestige, tolerance for pain and suffering, and the expectation that a patient will want to get well."
True, dat.
"The modern hospital is best suited to a severely ill person. These people are most tolerant of hosptial routine and its indignities, irritants and difficulties."
This is why as soon as a patient gets well enough to complain about the food, I put in a discharge to home order.
All these quotes are from the final chapter, by the way. The rest of the book was not nearly as riveting, unfortunately.
Crichton was a gifted genius (1942-2008). It is worth noting that he wrote this in residency.

[Amirtha Shri · Rating 3 out of 5]

This non-fiction is based on Crichton's experiences as a medical student at the Harvard Medical School (MGH). It pinpoints five cases that he believes are indicative of some ways of change in the field of medicine.

Ralph Orlando (Now and Then) - I couldn't understand Crichton's rationale behind picking this case in particular out of the tens of patients he describes alongside, especially because of the skimpy spotlight given to this patient, save the impersonal deliverance of the news of his death to his family members. Immediately after, the topic shifts to growth in statistical metrics in health care and how prevention is not seen as important as cure.

John O'Connor (Cost of Cure) - Crichton picks the case of John who has a fever of unknown origin that causes his enzymes and other parameters to go haywire. He walks you through the consultation of various specialists, the administration of various medicines, the excessive number of tests John had to go through for about 30 days when the fever disappears as mystically as it made its appearance. For a guy like John, with no vices and no history of illnesses, it is shocking how he has a random attack and so is the expense accrued for treatment, or in this case, diagnosis. He elucidates how and why admission into hospitals are becoming increasingly expensive and explores the legitimacy of all parts of the expenditure.

Peter Luchesi (Surgical Tradition) - After the meticulous rendition of a meticulous surgery, Crichton talks about the factors of anesthetics, antiseptics, and advancement in knowledge in the field of surgery. He also talks about how physicians and surgeons who have been disparate, and even indulge in badmouthing one another, are merging. He ends this chapter with very interesting examples related to Central Supply and Blood Bank.

Sylvia Thompson (Medical Transition) - Crichton explores automated diagnosis and looks at the prospects of automated therapy. Although the pros are bountiful, the imitation of the instinctive and experiential functions of a doctor is a challenge, which can be overcome only by capturing the way a physician thinks leaving no knowledge, intelligence and sensory parameters amiss. With increased automation, he says what will be left to the doctors in future would be the paths of research and behavioural orientations.

Edith Murphy (Patient and Doctor) - This chapter draws the relationship between doctors and patients, and most importantly between who the patients think are doctors - med students, house officers, interns, and residents. In increasing difficulty in educating medical students is discussed and methods like Socratic tradition of questioning is exemplified.

I enjoyed the book and found it very enlightening. However, I wish he had structured it better. Crichton essentially talks about multiple things like surgery, cleanliness, reordering of hospitals, etc. These could've been separated by topics to maintain the integrity of each one, as opposed to the lousy bobbing from one topic to another in a single chapter.

[Paulina · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's widely known that Michael Crichton started off as a medical doctor and then transitioned into writing. In Five Patients we get his perspective on the medical field, specifically patient care and the way hospitals are run.

This book was first written in 1970 when Crichton was 28, which is important since we take a look at how medicine was done at that time, what the worries of the future were in regards to the evolution of patient care and how hospitals would run decades later. His insights really show how far ahead he can see with the way that medicine actually evolved, and those things he missed and which exist now.

We get the stories of five patients, each detailing the medicine behind their cases and also explaining the ways that the physician, surgeon, or administrator is viewing this patient. Take for example the first patient, we get to see what happens when a man is admitted into the emergency ward, how the nurses and doctors accommodate for his care, how all the other patients are displaced or accommodated, and all the social and philosophical roots and consequences of these decisions.

At this time there's not much use of computers in the care of patients or the training of doctors. Crichton at one point imagines when virtual reality will aid doctors in the practice of surgeries, at another one where patients will not be touched by a human hand but will be cared for by machines, computers, and robots. It's interesting to see how some things have evolved and others have stayed the same.

He wonders about surgeries, how sometimes surgeons would do surgeries simply to practice and not for the patient (appendectomies for example), and how he sees that at that point in time the physician's job is to make surgeries the last resort. He sees "personalized medicine" as something of the future that is highly attainable (it is!).

It amazes me how he's able to see exactly where some things will get in the future, while how others will likely stay the same.

Also, there's a fun paragraph where he's describing a computer monitor where a patient can simply "touch the screen at the appropriate place" to mark their symptoms; he's describing a touch screen, which would be developed a few years later.

Fans of Michael Crichton's fiction novels might find this book not very exciting, but to me, it was incredibly interesting since I got to see the way hospitals evolved and how patient care has changed since then. As someone who works in the field of precision medicine (the new name for personalized medicine) I find it inspiring and motivating.

[David Hill · Rating 3 out of 5]

I recently had a discussion with a friend about what sorts of books I like to read given my interest in history. I made the distinction between books that are history and those that are more topical. I generally don't read the latest book about the hot topic of the day. I feel that this sort of book gets stale fairly quickly. That is, they may seem interesting today, but if you go back later, they may be proved to have missed the mark.

Five Patients fits in the "topical" category. The title is a bit misleading - the five patients discussed make up perhaps only twenty pages of text or less than a tenth of the reading. These patients are used as a way to introduce deeper, more general topics covering the history of medical care (anesthesia, anti-sepsis), the organization of teaching hospitals, advances in computer technology (telehealth, of all things, in 1969), and so on.

Crichton tells us how hospitals (and healthcare in general) have changed in the half-century prior to the book being published. Part of that is down to advances in medical knowledge and technology and part is down to how hospitals earn revenue (i.e. the rise of health insurance). In the Afterword, he makes some predictions on how hospitals might change in the next decade. In general, technological change has driven increasingly rapid change in society. I don't think hospitals changed as much as Crichton predicted, but the future is hard to predict, so I don't count this against him.

When it comes to disease and/or treatment, he doesn't get deep into specifics, which is good. He describes some diseases/conditions and those descriptions are still valid today, whereas the therapy would be totally outdated now. Had he spent more time talking about how these five patients were cured (or not), I think the book would be less valuable reading today.

If you're interested in the history of healthcare or hospitals, or curious about the technology of half a century ago, this book might be worth reading.

[Giulia B · Rating 2 out of 5]

Non riesco a capire a che pubblico dovrebbe rivolgersi.
Crichton utilizza casi clinici come pretesto per parlare della sanità americana, ma è un libro che nel 2019 non è invecchiato bene.
Pubblicato in America nel 1970 e basato su casi clinici che l'autore aveva osservato durante i suoi studi era già obsoleto quando è stato rivisitato nel 1994, ma oggi è semplicemente un incrocio tra uno spaccato di storia della medicina (che però si ferma ad analizzare solo la storia del territorio, nemmeno americano, ma proprio del Massachussets - anche se ci sono vaghi accenni ad Esculapio e Ippocrate) e un reportage.
Forse sono io che ho poco interesse nell'argomento, ma non riesco ad interessarmi ai problemi della sanità americana degli anni '60 né al suo futuro, dal momento che il suo "futuro" qui analizzato è già passato e non si è realizzato (nessuno fa diagnosi al televisore, per lo meno non che io sapppia)
In generale mi sembra un libro americano scritto per gli americani.

Inoltre sarà che faccio parte della generazione abituata alla spettacolarizzazione, cresciuta con la serie tv House M.D. per cui la malattia deve sempre essere rara e astrusa e alla fine svelata, ma i casi clinici non sono nemmeno particolarmente interessanti - capisco la difficoltà di inquadrare il paziente durante un periodo storico in cui gli esami che vengono eseguiti oggi non erano nemmeno pensabili, ma quelli presi in esame sono di una semplicità disarmante, studiati come basici in un qualsiasi corso di medicina - una sepsi, una polmonite, un LES, uno schiacciamento, una rianimazione cardiaca. (Capisco sia cinico banalizzarli, dal momento che sono casi clinici di persone reali e che hanno sofferto davvero, ma onestamente è l'autore in primis a trattare i pazienti come malattie e non come persone, tranne forse per il primo caso clinico).

[Preeti · Rating 3 out of 5]

An account of some cases that Crichton followed during his medical training in the 1960s. He acknowledges in the foreword (written in the 90s) that some of the content might be outdated. Doubly so now given that the book is 60 years old at this point.
I went into this expecting fiction - Crichton was also the originator of the show ER - so I didn't read this with much attention to detail.
The cases themselves are not notable or particularly dramatic. Crichton includes some observations and musings about the state of medicine and the US healthcare system of the time that are interesting.
For one, he describes a whole chatbot-type process to have medical diagnostics done by a computer - the discussion about this is quite relevant today. He also talks about the relationship between insurance and medical costs, the increasing cost of running a hospital, how to improve the medical education system, and the trade-offs between teaching hospitals, research hospitals, and patient-centric hospitals.
An interesting bit of history was that centuries ago, many patients who could afford to pay for medical treatment opted for private doctors to avoid exposure to other sick people (this was before people were aware of how disease spread, and before today's standards of hygiene were introduced in hospitals). So hospitals were mainly filled with poor patients, or those who could not be treated by their private doctors. This allowed for experimentation in treatment protocols since there was a lower expectation of people actually surviving. The surprising part of this (somewhat awful) tidbit is that the transition to having a hospital full of paying patients who demanded proper treatment was relatively recent, and made research hospitals necessary to continue advancing medical science.

[Jody · Rating 3 out of 5]

Five Patients is about 50 years old, so it is "dated." But, that actually makes it more interesting. It is surprising what has changed and what has not changed in 50 years. The author (a medical student at the time) made predictions about what would change. Sometimes he was right on, other times not at all. Each chapter is an actual medical case (with names changed) at Massachusetts General Hospital, along with observations about hospitals and medicine related to that case. One chapter discusses costs in considerable detail. It is very revealing in several ways. I'll let you draw your own conclusions, but I found it fascinating. His observations about insurance are interesting, and he did not foresee what would happen in the future in regard to insurance and costs and our current situation.

Some parts are better written than others, and the language regarding gender is irritating. Of course, at the time, it really was standard to refer to all general persons as "he" or "him" and the later attempts to be neutral with "he/she" and the like haven't been all that successful. But I find it amazing that the language seems to allow no possibility that a doctor might ever be a woman. In 1969 there were female physicians and medical students. General references to doctors as "men" is irritating when the word "doctors" would work just fine, as in "a senior man" for a senior doctor or "a private man" for a doctor in private practice.

Overall, Five Patients is fascinating, especially in the context of comparing hospital medicine then and now and stimulating thoughts on what has changed and what needs to change. I recommend it highly, more for the information and perspective than for the writing itself.

[Adelyne · Rating 2 out of 5]

(+) An interesting way of discussing problems relating to the American healthcare system and the way in which hospitals are run by using five different patients as examples – though this takes away much of the focus from the patients themselves. Although this book was written quite awhile ago now, even the updated foreword is now over 20 years old, some of the issues (particularly with insurance) are still applicable today whilst for others (like concerns over whether or not patients are able to accept tele-diagnosis as an alternative to a face-to-face consultation) it was quite interesting to read about the concerns about something that is quite widely accepted today.

(-) From the blurb (and title!), I expected more of a patient-centred book – I was interested in what happened to the construction worker injured in the scaffold collapse, perhaps more from the viewpoint of the patient instead of what effectively was a case presentation followed by a discussion about something to do with the way hospitals or medical schools are run.

Overall: Short, informative read about the state of the American healthcare system and medical schools in the 1960s. Not as patient-centred as it could have been for the title, certainly none of the "vivid real life stories" that I'd expected, and I was disappointed that it didn't really live up to its summary. This is definitely Crichton the medical school student, not the thriller-writing genius of Jurassic Park. It was OK: 2.5 stars.

[Dane Cobain · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was an interesting one because it’s Crichton writing about medicine and sharing some of the things that he learned from working at a hospital. As well as being the guy behind Jurassic Park, Crichton also created ER, and this book shows that he knew what he was talking about when he did that.

True, the book was written in the late sixties and so medicine has changed quite a lot since then, but then there are also a surprising number of places in which it hasn’t really changed at all. Given that I’ve worked with a client on a book about the future of healthcare, it was interesting to take a look back at the past, as well as at what Crichton thought the future was likely to look like way back then.

A lot of the technologies and the ideas that he talks about are still very much hot topics today. For example, he covered some early examples of telemedicine, which is essentially when a doctor and a patient communicate via video chat. Back at the end of the 60s, the technology was super limited and the consultations were in black and white, but I was fascinated by the fact that they were happening at all.

The title comes from the core concept, which is that Crichton follows the stories of five different patients. Fascinating.

[Patrick Fisher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Similar to his fictional works, Crichton does a good job making the mundane feel interesting and exciting - mostly. In this case, it’s not genetic patenting, nano bots, or quantum technology, but rather the realm of medicine. As the title suggests, the book tells the real-life stories of five medical patients, which serve as springboards to discuss a wide variety of topics, including the history of hospitals, surgery, antisepsis, blood transfusions (which was VERY interesting) and more. He also writes about emerging technological advancements in medicine at the time, such as tele-diagnosis using TVs (what we know today as telehealth).

He does ramble considerably in the book (more so in the last third) and I lost the thread more than a few times. And it does end abruptly. However, I came away from it with a lot of knowledge about - and a much deeper appreciation for - the world of medicine and hospitals.

Note: It was fun to spot the origin of scenes he would later write for the pilot of ER. Reading this alongside watching The Pitt (itself being a spiritual successor to ER) which makes for a fascinating experience. Many of the details Crichton wrote about in 1969 are seemingly the same in terms of how emergency departments operate today.