Anthony Daniels
The Unnameable
The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer
By Siddhartha Mukherjee
Fourth Estate 592pp £25 order from our bookshop
There was a strange ritual on one of the wards in which I worked as a young doctor. Before the chief did his rounds, the medical notes of all the patients would be put out on their bed tables, ready for him to consult – except those of the patients with cancer. They were not the only patients on the ward with potentially fatal conditions, of course; but cancer was regarded as a disease so awful, with an outcome inevitably so degrading, that it shamed the patient and doctor alike, and therefore could not be named or referred to. Cancer was held in a peculiar kind of appalled awe.
@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Last Tweets