Five Patients (original 1970; edition 1989)

I love Michael Crichton books. He is one of my favorite authors and many of his books rank among the top couple books on my list. However, this book is not one of them. Upon reading the back cover before buying the book, I believed I picked up a thriller that combines cutting edge science and technology. I quickly found that I would be sorely disappointed.

The name of the book basically is what the plot is entirely about. It focuses on five different cases of patients at the Massachusetts General Hospital. I found that the book isn't really a true story by normal standards. What Crichton has done is use the five different cases to explain current trends in medicine. The cases presented do not provide any sort of anticipation or excitement. They are just random health anomalies or accidents which are used to helped transition into different topics of medicine.

The explanations are very in depth and well thought out, but they are not very interesting to read for the common person. Crichton does a good job at breaking down the information that is presented. Much of what he talks about is very specialized to the field of medicine, but he explains it all very clearly (although some parts are just too complex to understand without further research). Crichton also touches on some of the problems facing people and medical costs at the time of publishing. These problems still exist and it was interesting to some degree to read more in depth to some of the problems plaguing the health care system.

For the most part, this book is not your typical Michael Crichton book. It focuses more on factual evidence on the trends in medicine and hospitals rather than actual story and excitement. If you find yourself interested in a medical profession, than this book may be very interesting to you. If you are looking for a good story and excitement, this may not be the best choice. ( )

This is NOT a work of fiction as many think it is. It was written by Crichton while he was a 4th year medical student at Massachusetts General Hospital. His thesis is that despite exclamations of "new medicine" there were no huge breakthroughs or quantum leaps in care, yet there was some kind of change. This is his attempt at investigating what that change might be by describing the experiences of five people through their hospitalization. Hence, the subtitle The Hospital Explained. This is set in the late 1960s. There is a glossary for unfamiliar terms. His interest is shown in the bibliographies he provides regarding Medical History, relationship of hospital to community, Medical Sociology, and tracing of watershed moments in hospital care with particular attention to the new and future use of computers. ( )

I generally love Crichton books but this one fell short... probably why I found it on the $1.00 rack at 1/2 Price Books. The book details 5 case studies of patients with various maladies. In typical Crichton fashion, it's easily seen that he devoted much research to this book. However, as a work of fiction goes he may have devoted a little too much as it reads more like a history book on the hospital and medicine. I won't deny that there was some intriguing information contained here, but I don't tend to enjoy history nor did I buy this book to brush up on my medical knowledge. His writing tends to involve jargon and references I have know understanding of largely because I have zero background in medicine. The stories of the 5 patients hold some potential to be captivating, but Crichton kept interrupting his stories with more history, statistics, and facts, slowing down the entire book to a textbook-like read.

Perhaps I could rate this book higher if I had known what I was getting myself into before I started reading it... like I said, it *is* interesting, but in a that's-an-interesting-bit-of-trivia way and not a that's-a-great-story way. Bottom line, if you're interested in this history of hospitals and medicine you may very well enjoy this. If you're looking for the type of Crichton story found in Jurassic Park, Airframe, Prey, or Pirate Latitudes, then there's really nothing to see here. ( )

While the story was broken up across the patients as described, I rated this a little higher because it was thought provoking. It gave me pause to sit down and think about how the examples are still true today. ( )

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....