The Language of Cells: A Doctor and His Patients

In beautiful and clear prose, this book depicts the drama in interpreting a sick patient's cells. But it is also the story of one surgical pathologist's journey to find out what is human about his patients and himself. It is a touching read and a fascinating look behind the curtain into a highly specialized hospital laboratory.

Spencer Nadler is a pathologist who would be a clinical physician. He is a doctor of medicine who would be a literary artist. He demonstrates in these exquisitely wrought pages a deep sense of identification and empathy with the very real human beings whose cells he sees in his microscope. He writes about intersecting with their lives in a style both concrete and moving so that we cannot help but also identify with the heart-wrenching experience of disease.So there's an irony in the title and a kind of strange misdirection: Dr. Nadler's concentration is NOT on cellular life, but instead on the psychological, existential and spiritual aspects of people whose cells have gone bad.He begins with the story of a 35-year-old woman who has breast cancer. She wants to see the cancerous cells in the microscope. Nadler, whose daily work is performing biopsies, especially surgical biopsies made on the fly as the patient is etherized upon a table, obliges, and thereby begins a relationship with her and her illness that goes well beyond what can be experienced through the lenses of his "research-quality German microscope made by Zeiss." She sees landscapes and metaphors in the dead and dying cells, and Nadler is once again reminded of the human experience of disease.Next is the chapter entitled simply "Fat" about a woman suffering from morbid obesity. She undergoes the Rouxen-Y gastric bypass, a gastrointestinal reconstruction surgery that miniaturizing her stomach from a capacity of 1,700 milliliters to 35 milliliters. (I have a question not answered in the text: why did her stomach have to be SO small? Couldn't they have left her with say, two or three hundred milliliters?) The procedure works and she goes from over 360 pounds to 180, but she cannot eat more than a few ounces of food at any one setting and she must--as Nadler so beautifully phrases it on page 39-swallow only "bonsaied boluses" and take "great care to chew them to a flow.""Fat" is quite frankly one of the best medical essays I have ever read. But I am not alone in admiring the artistry of Nadler's carefully constructed prose. Two of the essays in this book, "Brain Cell Memories" and "An Old Soldier," the first about brain tumors, and the second about a 75-year-old man who has been a paraplegic for 55 years, are included in, respectively, The Best American Essays, 2001 and The Best American Essays, 1999. I was particularly impressed with "An Old Soldier," in which Nadler's clear, stark prose reveals the courage, strength and sheer cussed determination it takes for WWII vet Sam Patterson to live when "His lower trunk and limbs, his bowels, bladder, and genitals, are permanently incommunicado, shutting him off from the rest of his body like a demented mind." (p. 150)The other chapters are "Heart Rhythms," which is essentially a heroic portrait of conductor Mehli Mehta; "Early Alzheimer's: A View from Within" which features AD-sufferer Morris Friedell who "can crystalize the life t

Spencer Nadler is a rare breed--a doctor who can transform the intricacies of surgical pathology into lyrical narratives that are as inspiring as they are informative. Reading these moving essays gave me access to a world that I normally consider way over my head. I only wish all doctors had Nadler's sensitivity to his patients and insight into the innermost workings of the body. This is a very unique, uplifting book.

Although I've read most of Spencer Nadler's personal essays in various literary journals along the way, reading The Language of Cells in its entirety has been a wonderful experience. Dr. Nadler gives cells an emotional life,a human side in the world of the layman and fuses emotions with the stark reality of the world of medicine. Bravo!!

this book is a collection of beautifully written essays that explore the doctor/author's experience with a variety of patients dealing with serious illnesses. what I like so much about the book is how caring the doctor is towards his patients. I think that anyone facing a serious illness would be comforted by reading this book, even if they don't have the particular illnesses in the book. It is great to know that there are doctors are out there who care. I would give this book to anyone who has to deal with the medical profession and who is afraid that all doctors are concerned more about themselves than their patients.