Five Patients

by Michael Crichton

Book Overview

A construction worker in his fifties is seriously injured in the collapse of a scaffold....A middle-aged railroad dispatcher develops a high fever that makes him wildly delirious....A young worker nearly severs his hand from his arm in an accident....A woman traveling alone has persistent chest pains and is treated by a doctor on a TV screen....A mother of three is diagnosed with a deadly disease....

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0394425081
• ISBN13: 9780394425085
• Release Date: January 1970
• Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
• Length: 232 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Five Patients. Five Stories. A Unique View of Crichton.

A must-read for any fan of Crichton, Five Patients will take you through the story of five patients of Massachusetts General Hospital. Written while he was still a student, the reader can glean an understanding of why Crichton writes the novels he does now. The non-fiction aspect of the book is atypical Crichton, but makes the stories that much more engaging. Along with a deeper understanding of where Crichton comes from, the reader will also get a deeper understanding of the modern day hospital and the things that go right, and wrong, inside its walls. This is not the Crichton you think you know, so don't buy it if you want another Jurassic Park. Instead, buy it as a window to the past to see a Michael Crichton you won't see anywhere else.

Solid Informational Novel

I am an enourmous fan of the TV show ER. Everyone knows that Michael Crichton created ER so when i finally found a copy of Five Patients, (the book is extremly hard to find), I quickly grabbed it off the shelf and bought it. I thought that it would be like reading an episode of ER. Boy was a wrong, but wrong in a good way. For each patient Crichton takes up between 45-60 pages. Only 10-12 of those pages are about the patient themself. The rest is information, not on medicine, but how the hospital has changed throughout the years. From surgery to cost to medicine itself. I enjoyed the information tremendously. And as anyone who reads my reviews knows, sometimes I'm not a big fan of an entire novel being informational.(Congo) But Five Patients is different. It taught me stuff about the hospital I didn't know, and added on to the stuff I already knew. However by the final patient, Edith Murphy, the information was something I already knew so that took a little away. But only a little. By reading this book, I can see my I enjoy ER so much. It's the best show on television in my opinion. Five Patients is true nonfiction work.

Five-Patients: Technically Mezmerizing!

Michael Crichton has braught us the Blockbuster TV series ER, in this book he gives us an in-depth look at how the hospital works, and about hospital issues.He relates his personal experiances with explanitary notes and discussions. I give this book a 10, and suggest it to anyone interested in Medical issues.

Highlights many of the changes in medicine in recent years.

The book was written many years ago, so it is not up to date. However, from a medical student's point of view, it does bring out many of the exciting advances in medicine and shows the doctor's role in patient care, which shouldn't change with time.