The appreciation day for doctors is celebrated on different days in different parts of the world. July 1 is National Doctors Day in India. In US, it is celebrated on March 30. Doctors work day and night, at the cost of their own personal life, to make the life of another better and happier. But they are often taken for granted and not appreciated as much as they should be. Here is a list of books that celebrate doctors and medicine. Grey’s Anatomy<\/em> and House MD<\/em> (my personal favourite solely for the crackling sarcasm) are TV shows that throw light\u00a0into the life and stress\u00a0of doctors. The number of books that revolve around medical contributions seem smaller in terms of their readership and reach in spite of their significance. Here are eight books that acknowledge the contributions of doctors. \u00a0All the books have been linked to their GoodReads page.<\/p>\n

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1. MY COUNTRY by Abraham Verghese
\n“My tools – the hammer, the flashlight, the stethoscope – are scattered on his bed. As I pick them up one by one, I realize that all I had to offer Luther was the ritual of the examination, this dance of a Western shaman<\/em>”<\/p>\n

A memoir that uniquely describes the experience of an immigrant physician faced with the devastating medical and personal consequences of treating AIDS in the 1980’s. His life becomes entangled with the lives and suffering of his patients which ultimately costs him his marriage.<\/p>\n

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2. WHEN BREATH BECOMES AIR by Paul Kalanithi
\n“The tricky part of illness is that, as you go through it, your values are constantly changing. You try to figure out what matters to you, and then you keep figuring it out.”<\/em><\/p>\n

The 2016 release is the story of either side of the diagnosis table – Paul’s life as a successful intern\/doctor and later as a patient diagnosed with cancer\u00a0at the peak of his career. You can read a review of the book here.<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

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3. COMA by Robin Cook
\nFinally some medical fiction – Robin Cook has written so many medical thrillers that it seems unfair to include just one. Coma<\/em> is a powerful book on harvesting black-market-organs. Susan Wheeler, a third-year medical student investigates the causes behind two cases of unexpected\u00a0comas and discovers the oxygen line has been tampered with to induce carbon monoxide poisoning.\u00a0She discovers the evil nature of the Jefferson Institute, an intensive care facility where patients are suspended from the ceiling and kept alive until they can be harvested for healthy organs.<\/p>\n

\n4. TAKE MY HANDS : The remarkable story of Dr. Mary Verghese by Dorothy Clarke Wilson
\nThis book is\u00a0a favourite of my mother’s who herself is a doctor. I have read this years ago on her insistence, while at school, and it touched my heart. The book isn’t famous on GoodReads, but it is a good one.<\/p>\n

Mary Verghese was among the earliest pioneers of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation in India. However, \u00a0she was injured in a road crash in 1954 that resulted in complete spinal cord injury leaving her a permanent paraplegic. She still continued her professional work and was awarded the Padma Shri in 1972 in recognition of her contributions to the field of medicine.<\/p>\n

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5. THE MAN WHO MISTOOK HIS WIFE FOR A HAT AND OTHER CLINICAL TALES by Oliver Sacks
\nThis is a book of the case histories of patients lost in the bizarre neurological disorders.\u00a0Often the patients are in their own private world and fail to see reality the way it is. There are stories of individuals with mental aberrations, loss of memory of past and those who have unmatchable talents in other spheres such as art or mathematics in spite of being mentally challenged.<\/p>\n

In January 2015, Oliver Sacks was diagnosed with a recurrence of cancer, and wrote Gratitude<\/em>which combines his four essays that appeared originally in New York Times.<\/p>\n

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