God’s Hotel

Description

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 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.

PRAISE FOR GOD’S HOTEL

“Transcendent… readable chapters go down like restorative sips of cool water, and its hard-core subversion cheers like a shot of gin… God’s Hotel [is] a tour de force… Others have written about the relationship between time and medical care with similar eloquence and urgency, but the centuries of perspective that Dr. Sweet brings infuse the point with unforgettable clarity.” –The New York Times

“A radical and inspiring alternative vision of caring for the sick.” –Vanity Fair 

 “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 

“Victoria Sweet writes beautifully about the enormous richness of life at Laguna Honda, the chronic [care] hospital where she has spent the last twenty years, and the intense sense of place and community that binds patients and staff there. Such community in the medical world is vanishingly rare now, and Laguna Honda may be the last of its kind… God’s Hotel is a most important book which raises fundamental questions about the nature of medicine in our time. It should be required reading for anyone interested in the ‘business’ of healthcare – and especially those interested in the humanity of healthcare.” –Oliver Sacks, M.D. author of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and The Mind’s Eye 

“Victoria Sweet has written the best non-fiction book I’ve read this year… The qualities that make her a great doctor are the same qualities that make her book so powerful, original and relevant… For a very long time, a gang of renegades got away with practicing medicine the way it should be: sitting with patients, watching, listening, often doing nothing more than being present. And then Victoria Sweet, a candidate for sainthood, wrote a book that is a beacon in the darkness.” –Jesse Kornbluth, Huffington Post

“A beautifully written and illuminating book… [Sweet’s] metaphors are poetic and hint at the mystical, but then she pulls back with the educated eye of a scientist… For both the agnostic and the believer, Sweet pinpoints the element of medicine that makes it a calling rather than a job: the unique and sustaining love that is sparked between a doctor and patient.” –Jerome Groopman, The New York Review of Books 

“Remarkable… [Sweet] would appreciate that it took time for me to journey to and through her work since that may be one of the many compelling messages she so eloquently, yet simply by storytelling, conveys… permitting ‘tincture of time’ to also do its job.” –The Huffington Post

“Sweet writes fluidly and well… She weaves a fascinating account of the historical forces that transformed our view of the body… It’s high time that someone gets medieval on modern medicine’s morass, and Victoria Sweet is just the woman to do it.” –Cleveland Plain Dealer

“Captivating… with this humane and thoughtful work, Sweet joins physician-authors such as Oliver Sacks, Jerome Groopman and Abraham Verghese.” –The Dallas Morning News

“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

“Intelligent and moving… In this often lyrical book, Dr. Sweet reveals a deep spirituality and unsentimental compassion.” –Minneapolis Star-Tribune

“Sweet paints a dynamic portrait… [which] is at its core testimonial to the body’s remarkable ability to heal when it is provided with the simple ingredients of time and care.” –Utne Reader 

“Visionary… thoroughly subversive in all the best ways… Sweet proposes ways that we might reimagine our way forward by looking into the distant past… This book’s lessons and conclusions should challenge doctors, nurses, hospital administrators, and policy makers to stop and rethink their core beliefs.” –Journal of Health Affairs

“Containing no medical jargon… nothing too gory or gut-wrenching; just descriptive stories of patients, unusual treatments, a hospital in transition, and a doctor on a journey, learning to practice ‘a beautiful art.'” –East Bay Express 

“By braiding… historical searches with her time at Laguna Honda, [Sweet] arrives at a compelling critique of modernized health care and a vision for transforming it.” –Books & Culture

“[Our] healthcare system might function a lot better if every single American citizen, healthcare professional, politician and legislator would read Victoria Sweet’s insightful, beautifully written and moving book.” –Bookpage 

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 the University of California, San Francisco, she is also a prize-winning historian with a Ph.D. in history and social medicine.

INTRODUCTION

More than twenty years ago, Dr. Victoria Sweet arrived at San Francisco’s Laguna Honda Hospital, intending to stay for a brief time. A descendant of the Hôtel-Dieu (God’s Hotel) that cared for the sick poor in the Middle Ages, Laguna Honda was the last almshouse in the country. 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 there.

At Laguna Honda, lower-tech but human-paced, Sweet had the opportunity to practice a kind of “slow medicine” that has almost vanished, and falling under the hospital’s spell, she decided to stay. Gradually, her remarkable patients transformed the way she understood medicine. Alongside the modern view of the body as a machine to be repaired, they evoked an older idea, of the body as a garden to be tended. God’s Hotel is 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 VICTORIA SWEET

A member of the medical staff at Laguna Honda Hospital in San Francisco for more than twenty years, Victoria Sweet is an Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and a prize-winning historian with a Ph.D. in history and social medicine. God’s Hotel has been praised by Oliver Sacks, Jerome Groopman, and numerous other medical authorities; has won numerous awards; and has deemed “hard-core subversion” (The New York Times), “radical and inspiring” (Vanity Fair) and “subversive in all the best ways” (Health Affairs).

 

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

Throughout the book, Victoria Sweet talks about what she learns from her patients. How do their stories inform the author’s vision of her profession?

With whom did you identify more as you read her account, the patients or the nurses and doctors? Why?

In many ways the workings of Laguna Honda go against modern medical culture and standards. Can you find parallels in your own life, in which you have had experiences that ran counter to the norm or to your own expectations? How did you respond?

In what ways does Dr. Sweet criticize modern medical practice? Are there ways in which her critique is applicable to society in general?

Sweet invokes two metaphors for the practice of medicine: the contemporary one, of a mechanic repairing a broken machine; and an older, “premodern” one, of a gardener tending a garden. What are the strengths and limitations of each? Which do you gravitate to, and why?

What is “slow medicine”? Have you had any experiences of a “slow medicine” approach in your own life? Have you experienced parallel “slow” approaches in other endeavors of which you have been a part?

What does Sweet mean by “the efficiency of inefficiency”? Have you encountered this phenomenon in your own life? Where and when?

A major theme that runs through the book is that of community. How is community created? Who creates it? How is it sustained? What parallels can you envision between a hospital and other settings-a school, a college, a corporate workplace?

Another major theme that runs through the book is hospitality. What does hospitality mean in the context of the book? How might this translate from a hospital setting to other settings?

Dr. Sweet makes a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. How does this pilgrimage play out in her life? What role does discernment play in her life? What role does it play in yours?

US

Additional information

Weight	13.4 oz
Dimensions	1.0100 × 5.4600 × 8.1800 in
Imprint	Riverhead Books
ISBN-13	09781594486548
ISBN-10	1594486549
Author	Victoria Sweet
Audience	General / adult
BISAC	HEA028000, MED109000
Subjects	physicians, insurance, health care, hotel, psychiatry, alternative medicine, nursing, doctors, hospice, patients, MED109000, sickness, victoria, history of medicine, hospitals, medical school, holistic medicine, narrative medicine, slow medicine, clinician, Hildegard of Bingen, insurance companies, prescription drugs, illness, mental health, healing, self help, therapy, healthcare, health, biography, Memoir, medical, medicine, HEA028000, california, body, nurse, San Francisco, public health, case studies, medication, mental illness, non-fiction, biographies
Format	General Trade