Intern in the Promised Land

This exciting and engaging book chronicles professional life in a very different era of medicine. In spite of what older physicians often tell younger colleagues, in many ways it was an easier time even though there was much less certainty in terms of diagnosis. Treatment options were severly limited. Patients' expectations were also different. Death was accepted as a realiy and patients and families were less likely to expect miracles. The quest for virtual immortality, fueled by the routine evening news reports of "medical breakthroughs," had not yet begun. However, as Dr. Gracey so successfully documents, patients had much the same mental and physical disease burdens as we see today. Because of their social status diseases often presented at a later stage with poorer outcomes. Those who came to Cook County Hospital, uniformlly, also carried the additional burdens of poverty, racial discriminationn and multiple social issues.Consider the fact that if you were a pregnant black woman in the 1950's and early 1960's most of the hospitals in the city were closed to you. The County system was your only realistic option. This book details the stories of the interesting patients cared for by the author on the various services. In terms of education, then as now, the patients were the best teachers, showing us insights about their illnesses, but even more about their lives and the resilience of the human spirits in the face of apparent crushing adversity.The situation at the Cook County Hospital has continued to deteriorate over the years since the author interned there. The causes were clearly poor management with allegations of rampant patronage, cronysism, nepotism, payroll padding and contract rigging. If fiscal and administrative excellence and discipline are not soon extablished at Cook County Hospital, Chicagoland residents will be deprived of opportunities for improved health and in some cases even their very lives.