How complicated is brain surgery actually?
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Gray Matters: A Biography of Brain Surgery. By Theodore Schwartz.
Dutton; 512 pages; $32. Oneworld; £25 Neurosurgeons are typically portrayed in one of two ways in popular culture. One is as a brilliant, if arrogant, boffin.
These doctors are intellectuals (it is brain surgery, after all) who have very little social life. Think of Dr Jack Shephard, the protagonist of “Lost", a television series, or Doctor Strange, a Marvel character. The other common depiction is as a mad scientist.
At best, these characters perform unethical surgeries and, at worst, become cannibalistic serial killers, such as Hannibal Lecter. But these portrayals miss much of what modern neurosurgery really is, argues Theodore Schwartz, a neurosurgeon and professor at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York. “Gray Matters", an engrossing new book, goes on a tour through different types of brain surgery, from seemingly crude emergency treatments for traumatic injuries to high-precision surgeries to implant electrodes that provide relief from obsessive compulsive disorder.
For each, Dr Schwartz skilfully weaves explanations of procedures together with personal and historical anecdotes and real-life case studies. These include his own patients, as well as notable people, such as John F. Kennedy and Joe Biden, who found themselves on neurosurgeons’ operating tables.
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