The Laws of Medicine by Siddhartha Mukherjee

AUTHOR’S NOTE
    Y ears ago, as a medical student in Boston, I watched a senior surgeon operate on a woman. The surgeon, call him Dr. Castle, was a legend among the surgical residents. About six feet tall, with an imposing, formal manner that made the trainees quake in their clogs, he spoke in a slow, nasal tone that carried the distinct drawl of the South. There was something tensile in his build—more steel wire than iron girder—as if his physique had been built to illustrate the difference between stamina and strength. He began rounds at five every morning, then moved down to the operating theaters in the basement by six fifteen, and worked through the day into the early evening. He spent the weekends sailing near Scituate in a one-mast sloop that he had nicknamed The Knife .
    The residents worshipped Castle not only for the precision of his technique, but also because of the quality of his teaching. Other surgeons may have been kinder, gentler instructors, but the key to Castle’s teaching method was supreme self-confidence. He was so technically adept at surgery—so masterful at his craft—that he allowed the students to do most of the operating, knowing that he could anticipate their mistakes or correct them swiftly after. If a resident nicked an artery during an operation, a lesser surgeon might step in nervously to seal the bleeding vessel. Castle would step back and fold his arms, look quizzically at the resident, and wait for him or her to react. If the stitch came too late, Castle’s hand would reach out, with the speed and precision of a falcon’s talon, to pinch off the bleeding vessel, and he wouldstitch it himself, shaking his head, as if mumbling to himself, “Too little, too late.” I have never seen senior residents in surgery, grown men and women with six or eight years of operating experience, so deflated by the swaying of a human head.
    The case that morning was a woman in her fifties with a modest-size tumor in her lower intestine. We were scheduled to begin at six fifteen, as usual, but the resident assigned to the case had called in sick. A new resident was paged urgently from the wards, and he came quickly into the operating room, tugging his gloves on. Castle walked up to the CAT scans hung on the fluorescent lightbox, studied them silently for a while, then moved his head ever so slightly, signaling the first incision. There was a reverential moment as he stretched out his right hand and the nurse handed him the scalpel. The surgery began without incident.
    About half an hour later, the operation was still under perfect control. Some surgeons liked to blast music in the operating room—rock and roll and Brahms were common choices—but Castle preferred silence. The resident was working fast and doing well. The only advice that Castle had offered was to increase the size of the incision to fully expose the inner abdomen. “If you can’t name it, you can’t cut it,” he said.
    But then the case took a quick turn. As the resident reached down to cut the tumor out of the body, the blood vessels surrounding it began to leak. At first, there was only a trickle, and then a few more spurts. In a few minutes about a teaspoon of blood had run into in the surgical field, obscuring the view. The carefully exposed tissues were submerged ina crimson flood. Castle stood by the side, his hands folded, watching.
    The resident was clearly flustered. I watched a pool of sweat forming over his brow, mirroring the pool of blood in front of him. “Does this patient have a known bleeding disorder?” he asked, his desperation mounting. “Was she on a blood thinner?” Usually he would have studied the chart the night before and known all the answers—but he had hurriedly been assigned to the case.
    â€œWhat if you didn’t know?” said Castle. “What if I told you that I didn’t know?” His hands had already reached into