Hospital - Sydney Lewis

The future of medical care is now high on the US political agenda, but few understand what it is really like to deal with the nation's health in the very battle trenches of American medicine. In this study, Lewis uses Chicago's Cook County Hospital as a microcosm of both the human and the social problems faced by America. She interviewed a wide range of people involved in the running of the hospital, from a former director to an elevator operator, and from a security guard to the head of the trauma unit.;All the problems of society are encompassed in these moving - and at times terrifying - stories, from the victims of appalling child abuse to the racial tensions among the staff. Here are accounts of the emergency-room doctors who, horrified by the bullet-riddled bodies of the same teenagers month after month, have started an anti-violence education programme in the schools. And here is an angry account of the rise of tuberculosis, a disease long-thought eliminated, as well as the more familiar tribulations of those dealing with AIDS, drugs, and the other plagues of our post-industrial society.;Here too, are older doctors recalling the corrupt and patronage-driven old days, when a note from your alderman was enough to get a job, or a few months of bed rest for an obstreperous relative.;Beneath these often shocking, but always gripping accounts, lies the encouraging story of a group of people determined to wrest their institution from the quagmire of politics, and devote their lives to the ever more difficult task of bringing health to an unhealthy society.