The lost art of healing

by B. Lown

The author draws on his forty years of experience as a physician to call for a new appreciation of the importance of the doctor-patient relationship and of the art rather than the technology of medicine. Never Before has medicine had the capacity to do so much good, yet never have people been so disenchanted with their doctors. The problem is that doctors have lost the art of healing, which involves much more than diagnostic skills and the ability to mobilize technology. At its core is the doctor-patient relationship, and in this provocative book one of our most distinguished physicians draws on forty years of experience to show how vitally important that relationship is. Dr. Lown offers a new paradigm: medicine with a human face, in which the art of healing is just as important as the mastery of medical techniques. This approach can cure as many ills as all the wonders of modern technology, and it can contain costs more readily than any health care reform plan.