San Francisco's Laguna Honda Hospital is the last almshouse in the country, a descendant of the h�tel-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 ...
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San Francisco's Laguna Honda Hospital is the last almshouse in the country, a descendant of the h�tel-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.
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Add this copy of God's Hotel: a Doctor, a Hospital, and a Pilgrimage to to cart. $53.45, good condition, Sold by Bonita rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Newport Coast, CA, UNITED STATES, published 2021 by Tantor and Blackstone Publishi.
This book tells the story of one doctor's experience of delivering medical care to those at the bottom: the poorest, people on the streets, the ones most often denied quality care. She's part of an extraordinary facility that delivers, and witnesses its loss, and tells the tender story without getting in the way. It's beautiful, often funny, insightful, sad, and an indictment of the directions healthcare is going.
Vera F
Mar 29, 2016
Excellent book
Arrived in good time, excellent condition, book well worth the read, very well written,
xenodad
Dec 13, 2014
Great book in many ways
This book was so good that I bought an extra copy to give to a friend. Dr. Sweet tells the compelling story of medicine and health care, and the difference. She also walks the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela, and describes how that experience had a profound influence on her. Her study of Hildegard of Bingen is also profound and insightful. The book is rich in so many ways, the writing is great, and the story of Laguna Honda is one I will long remember.
