God's hotel : a doctor, a hospital, and a pilgrimage to the heart of medicine / Victoria Sweet.
"Choosing service in the last remaining almshouse in America, and tracing our understanding of medicine back to its medieval roots, a physician uncovers lost lessons in the care of body and soul"--Provided by publisher.
"San Francisco's Laguna Honda Hospital is the last almshouse in the country, a descendant of the Hotel-Dieu (God's Hotel) that cared for the sick in the Middle Ages. Ballet dancers and rock musicians, professors and thieves--"anyone who had fallen, or, often, leapt, onto hard times" and needed extended medical care-ended up here. So did Victoria Sweet, who came for two months and stayed for twenty years. Laguna Honda, lower tech but human paced, gave Sweet the opportunity to practice a kind of attentive medicine that has almost vanished. Gradually, the place transformed the way she understood her work. Alongside the modern view of the body as a machine to be fixed, her extraordinary patients evoked an older idea, of the body as a garden to be tended. God's Hotel tells their story and the story of the hospital itself, which, as efficiency experts, politicians, and architects descended, determined to turn it into a modern "health care facility," revealed its own surprising truths about the essence, cost, and value of caring for body and soul"--Provided by publisher.
Record details
- ISBN: 1594486549
- ISBN: 9781594486548
- Physical Description: x, 416 pages : illustrations ; 21 cm
- Edition: First Riverhead edition
- Publisher: New York : Riverhead Books, 2013.
Content descriptions
- Bibliography, etc. Note:
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 391-416).
Search for related items by subject
- Subject:
- Sweet, Victoria.
Laguna Honda Hospital > History.
Hospital care > California > San Francisco > Anecdotes.
Physicians > United States > Biography. - Genre:
- Anecdotes.
Biographies.
Available copies
- 1 of 1 copy available at NC Cardinal. (Show)
- 1 of 1 copy available at Onslow County Public Library.
Holds
- 0 current holds with 1 total copy.
Show Only Available Copies
| Location | Call Number / Copy Notes | Barcode | Shelving Location | Status | Due Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sneads Ferry Branch Library | 610.92 SWE (Text) | 36015001216338 | Adult Nonfiction | Available | - |
