Hunting for Hippocrates: A Novel

by Warren J. Stucki

Maybe it was an innocent mistake, or could it have been sabotage? Either way, Dr. Moe Mathis is in a mess. After obtaining a positive biopsy and performing radical prostate cancer surgery on his lover's father, pathology now finds no evidence of cancer in the surgical specimen. To make matters worse, Howard died of complications from that surgery, straining his relationship with Connie to the point of breaking. But that's not the only arcane incident; recently Dr. Mathis has had a run of bad luck. The same day he operated on Howard, he also implanted a penile prosthesis in Mr. Calley for impotence. Now the surgical wound is infected with a mouth-dwelling bacterium, Streptococcus Viridans, leading Moe to conclude someone deliberately spit on his surgical instruments. Also Moe's colt inexplicably starts to hemorrhage and quickly bleeds to death. In his garage, Moe performs an autopsy--the stomach contents reveal tiny pieces of the drug, Coumadin. This is no accident! Horses do not run down to the pharmacy and purchase a blood-thinner. Moe can only think of three people with grudges, who also had his partner, Dr. Russell Wright; his office nurse, Diane Henrie and the reporting pathologist, Dr. Catherine Connelly. Moe's attempts to identify the perpetrator has yielded nothing and now he suddenly finds himself in jail charged with fraud, conspiracy and murder-one. Though it seems virtually impossible, his life, his career and his relationship with Connie all depend on his finding a way. From his cell, Moe fights off despair and tries to figure out how to get out of jail, solve these crimes, save his practice, restore his reputation and get Connie back.

296 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2003

Reviews

[Maya Yeboah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had to read this book for my Humanities class on Medical ethics. Moe Mathis' character and all the mess he got himself into clearly calls for a great bioethical analysis. Therefore, writing my essay for this book will not be too hard, since the novel is rich with striking examples of unethical and illegal medical behaviours.

In all the intrigue was great, the characters were well described, and the medical jargon appealed to my student nurse ears. However, I do believe that untrained individuals will have quite a hard time reading through this book wihout stopping frequently to research words and medical procedures.
I do believe that his book would have been better without the excessive profanity and immoral speech, but I guess that just my opinion as a Christian girl.
Quick read, great suspense.
I recommend it to all the lovers of medical thrillers who aren't slighted when reading explicit dialogues!

[Underworlder247 · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.0 ⭐️

What a unexpected surprise. It was REALLYYYYYY hard to get into this book and the beginning was not doing it for me. But what do you know? The last 40% really turned it around. The whole court scene I surprisingly really enjoyed. Abe really grew on me and it was nice to see progress in the brotherly relationship. The medical terms were a bit much at times, and I had to skim over them because I didn’t care enough and I knew I wouldn’t remember them either way. However, the way they were explained was well done because, as someone who has no knowledge in the medical field, I understood pretty much everything that was happening. If I were rating this book as just any regular book, I might’ve given it 3 stars. But the fact that it was for school and I somehow enjoyed it made the rating go higher. Not looking forward to the essay that follows tho :/

Also makes sense why I cant find any information about this book anywhere, you know, since 12 people have read it, and I bet at least 10 of them were in my Medicine and Ethics class.

I also just realized that the book started off with another character, and he was completely irrelevant after that one chapter.