[Regarding the saying "the secret of caring for the patient is caring for the patient"] The way we talk about patient care in our society is almost t… - Victoria Sweet

What I discovered was that the two ways of looking at the body—the modern and the premodern, the Fast and the Slow, as a machine to be repaired and as a plant to be tended—are both effective when they are applied to the right patient at the right time. For illnesses that come on suddenly—an inflamed appendix, a rip-roaring infection, a car accident, a heart attack—it is best to think like a mechanic—boldly, reductively. What is broken? What should I do to fix it? Desperate illnesses require desperate remedies. But not-desperate illnesses do better with not-desperate remedies. Diseases that come on slowly—chronic infections, complex medical conditions, the aftermath of the appendectomy, the heart attack, the chemotherapy—are best approached like a gardener, asking myself as Hildegard would have done, not what is broken but what is working? What are my patient's strengths and how can I support them? What can I do to nurture viriditas, the natural power of healing?

I had the time to try things, to stop others [referring to medications]. And what impressed me was how efficient it was and how much money I saved by having that extra time. And I will give an example. Most of the patients I met for the first time were very sick for a long time, and most of them, on average were on between 15 and 26 medications. Most of them only needed three or four of these medicines but no other doctor had the time to go through and find out, try this or take them off.

Everything looked so good in the computer, and yet what Father had gotten was not Medicine but Health Care-- Medicine without a soul. What do I mean by "soul"? I mean what Father did not get. Presence. Attention. Judgment. Kindness. Above all, responsibility.