Staff Pick
What a lovely, compassionate, enriching book. Trained as a conventional doctor, read as Sweet is transformed by an old-style charity hospital, wherein part of the medicine is giving nurses time on-shift to knit blankets for patients and really care for them. There's a fascinating discussion of how her patients did when she began to introduce remedies and principles of medicine from Hildegard von Bingen's writings. Recommended By Jennifer K., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
A medical “page-turner” that traces one doctor’s “remarkable journey to the essence of medicine” (
The San Francisco Chronicle).
San Francisco’s Laguna Honda Hospital is the last almshouse in the country, a descendant of the Hôtel-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, relatively low-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 the body and the soul.
Review
“Sweet’s watershed book ambushes and transforms you with its visionary middle way between the irreplaceable skills of doctors and the benefits of holistic medical knowledge and twenty-first-century technology and standards. Vital, exquisitely written, and spectacularly multidimensional, Sweet’s clinically exacting, psychologically discerning, practical, spiritual, and tenderly funny anecdotal chronicle steers the politicized debate over health care back to medicine and compassion." Booklist (starred review)
Review
“A remarkable, poignant portrait of a committed physician on a quest to understand the heart, as well as the art, of medicine. Laguna Honda Hospital…offers veteran physician Sweet a unique education in ministering to the body, heart, and soul....A marvelous, arresting read.” Library Journal (starred)
Review
"Sweet’s tales of her hospital, patients, colleagues, and herself offer a fresh linking of medicine past and present.” Publishers Weekly
Review
“Remarkably honest…in the dozen or so patient success stories, Sweet’s warm, anecdotal style shines....[Her] compelling argument for Laguna Honda’s philosophy of ‘slow medicine’ will make readers contemplate if perhaps the body should be viewed more as a garden to be tended rather than a machine to be fixed.” Kirkus Reviews
Review
“A radical and inspiring alternative vision of caring for the sick.” Vanity Fair
Review
“Engaging….You might not expect a book about San Francisco's most downtrodden patients to be a page-turner, but it is. With its colorful cast of characters battling the tide of history, God's Hotel is a remarkable journey into the essence of medicine.” San Francisco Chronicle
Review
“Sweet’s tone in God’s Hotel nicely matches her subject. Her writing has a lovely, antique quality….This hospital, with its chronically ill patients, crumbling buildings, and never-ending budget woes, was ‘a gift.’ In this beautiful and unique book, she shares that gift with us generously.” The Boston Globe
Synopsis
For readers of Paul Kalanithi s When Breath Becomes Air, a medical page-turner that traces one doctor s remarkable journey to the essence of medicine (The San Francisco Chronicle).
San Francisco s Laguna Honda Hospital is the last almshouse in the country, a descendant of the Hotel-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, relatively low-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 the body and the soul."
Synopsis
Look out for Victoria Sweet's new book, SLOW MEDICINE, coming September 2017
For readers of Paul Kalanithi's When Breath Becomes Air, a medical -page-turner- that traces one doctor's -remarkable journey to the essence of medicine- (The San Francisco Chronicle).
San Francisco's Laguna Honda Hospital is the last almshouse in the country, a descendant of the Hotel-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, relatively low-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 the body and the soul.
Synopsis
Victoria Sweet's new book, SLOW MEDICINE, is on sale now For readers of Paul Kalanithi's When Breath Becomes Air, a medical "page-turner" that traces one doctor's "remarkable journey to the essence of medicine" (The San Francisco Chronicle).
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, relatively low-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 the body and the soul.
Synopsis
San Francisco's Laguna Honda Hospital is the last almshouse in the country, a descendant of the Hôtel-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.
About the Author
Victoria Sweet has been a physician at San Francisco's Laguna Honda Hospital for more than twenty years. An associate clinical professor of medicine at University of California, San Francisco, she also holds a Ph.D. in history and social medicine. To learn more about Victoria Sweet and her work, please visit www.victoriasweet.com.