Mortal Lessons; Notes on the Art of Surgery

San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1996. First Harvest Edition [stated]. First printing [stated]. Trade paperback. Very good. 220, [4] pages. Illustrations. Picture credits. In this collection of nineteen unforgettable essays, Dr. Selzer describes unsparingly the surgeon's art. Both moving and perversely funny, Mortal Lessons is an established classic that considers not only the workings and misworkings of the human body but also the meaning of life and death. With a new Preface written by the Author especially for this edition. Allen Richard Selzer (June 24, 1928 - June 15, 2016) was an American surgeon and author. Richard Selzer graduated from Union College in 1948, with a B.S. and received his M.D. from Albany Medical College in 1953. He served in the Army for two years as a lieutenant in charge of a medical detachment. In 1960, following a surgical internship and residency at Yale University, he joined the faculty of Yale as a professor of surgery, where he remained until his retirement in 1985. Beginning in the 1970s, Selzer became well known as an author as well. Selzer's books are generally collections of short stories, essays, and memoirs, including selections from his massive diary. But Imagine a Woman consists entirely of fiction, and he has written two full-length memoirs, Raising the Dead, and Down from Troy: A Doctor Comes of Age. With author and friend Peter Josyph, Selzer published a kind of spoken autobiography, What One Man Said to Another: Talks with Richard Selzer, which has also been recorded as a Blackstone audiobook with Josyph reading the part of Selzer and actor Raymond Todd reading the part of Josyph. Derived from a Kirkus review: Death is never far from the surface in these essays and vignettes by surgeon and short-story writer Richard Seizer. Death is victor in the operating room when the anesthetist says, "I do not have a heartbeat," or in Korea when an ambulance upends in a flash flood and the child patient is dashed against the rocks. These are intensely moving passages, well-wrought examples of Selzer's baroque style. Such prose leaps effortlessly and teases with sensuous delights. But occasionally it slips into mannerism, as in Selzer's informative essays on the liver or the skin or the belly, or in his detailed account of the options in disposing of the corpse. [Then] he turns all wit and charm, and disarms in an essay confessing his pleasure in smoking or expressing hope that cardiologists will someday discover that jogging is bad for the heart. The final collection of stories is winning, too. These are reminiscences of growing up in Troy, New York, during the Depression, and Seizer will surely endear himself to anyone who has ever been carsick as he recalls those ritual Sunday rides. There is death again, too, in the tender description of his father's dying. An impressive display of knowledge and art, magic and mystery.