Surgery of the Soul: Reflections on a Curious Career

by Joseph E. Murray

Dr. Joseph E. Murray is a Nobel Prize-winning surgeon who pioneered techniques in organ transplantation and cranio-facial plastic surgery. In this autobiography, Murray recounts his life and career largely through telling the stories of individual patients he has helped both in the United States and in his travels abroad. He also describes his own experience as a patient recovering from a stroke. Although the subject matter is often technical, the text is written in an accessible style suitable for the general reader as well as students of medical history. Distributed by Watson Publishing International.

Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

255 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 2001

About the author

Joseph Edward Murray was an American plastic surgeon who performed the first successful human kidney transplant on identical twins on December 23, 1954. He shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1990 with E. Donnall Thomas for their discoveries concerning "organ and cell transplantation in the treatment of human disease.

Reviews

[Margaret]

JBM recommendation

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is probably the second best memoir by a surgeon after Francis D. Moore's. Moore is the better writer but Murray's book is structured better. Murray also wisely kept the book short. Too many medical memoirs feel padded out.

Interesting to compare Murray's humility with the arrogance on display in the memoirs of far less impressive physicians.

[Jim Gleason · Rating 5 out of 5]

Joseph E. Murray (2004) - autobiography of the first kidney surgeon

see this and more than a hundred other organ donation/transplant related books - many with my personal reviews - at http://www.trioweb.org/resources/book...

[Giulia Schneider · Rating 5 out of 5]

Touching, inspiring, and not nearly as dry as I thought it would be.