Further, Manheimer is preaching to a left-wing choir, assuming readers share his liberal political leanings on everything from the need for socialized medical care to a call for more lenient immigration policies. While many readers may wholeheartedly agree with Manheimer, others may be so distracted by his overt liberal agenda that they abandon the book. Captivating samplings of one doctor’s tour of duty inside the country’s oldest and perhaps most illustrious public hospital. Although I share Manheimer’s views, I found Twelve Patients uneven reading. Manheimer is an excellent physician who genuinely cares not only for his patients, but for his staff, as well. His respect for everyone, from nurses to hospital cleaning personnel, is evident and welcome. But the self-congratulatory ego sneaking into the proceedings is not. Sako, W.; Goto, S.; Shimazu, H.; Murase, N.; Matsuzaki, K.; Tamura, T.; Mure, H.; Tomogane, Y.; Arita, N.; Yoshikawa, H.; et al. Bilateral deep brain stimulation of the globus pallidus internus in tardive dystonia. Mov. Disord. 2008, 23, 1929–1931. [ Google Scholar] [ CrossRef] [ PubMed]

Manheimer was not only the medical director of the country’s oldest public hospital for over 13 years, but he was also a patient. As the book unfolds, the narrator is diagnosed with cancer, and he is forced to wrestle with the end of his own life even as he struggles to save the lives of others.

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He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.

Ostrem, J.L.; Starr, P.A. Treatment of dystonia with deep brain stimulation. Neurotherapeutics 2008, 5, 320–330. [ Google Scholar] [ CrossRef] [ PubMed] Book Genre: Autobiography, Biography, Biography Memoir, Health, History, Medical, Medicine, Memoir, Nonfiction, Psychology, Science Dr. Eric Manheimer, until recently medical director of New York City’s Bellevue Hospital, has added to the genre with Twelve Patients: Life And Death At Bellevue Hospital. Manheimer is the first to proudly explain Bellevue’s history.

The opening chapters of Twelve Patients are compelling enough to overcome the book’s flaws. We meet Juan Guerra, a 59-year-old career criminal dying of cancer. Manheimer’s description is of a basically decent person who had little chance in life. Despite multiple incarcerations, drug problems, and terminal illness, Guerra has managed to keep his family together, including his devoted wife of 35 years. The hospital staff secures his freedom so he can go home to die. Octavio Salcedo, an illegal immigrant working in the States, also develops a squamous cell carcinoma, but is less fortunate that his doctor. At age 32, his body is literally rotting from cancer; one leg, beyond rescue, has been amputated at the hip. There’s nothing for him but a morphine pump. He wishes to die at home, in Mexico, where he can be with his children. His young wife stands by staunchly, soon to be a penniless widow with small children. Again, we are shown the tremendous lengths Manheimer and his excellent staff will go to so the Salcedos may have their final wish. Their heroic efforts will leave only the most heartless reader dry-eyed. Alterman, R.L.; Miravite, J.; Weisz, D.; Shils, J.L.; Bressman, S.B.; Tagliati, M. Sixty hertz pallidal deep brain stimulation for primary torsion dystonia. Neurology 2007, 69, 681–688. [ Google Scholar] [ CrossRef]

Manheimer and his wife, Professor Diana Taylor, are fluent Spanish speakers with a deep knowledge and interest in South American politics and culture. The couple has traveled extensively through South America and own a Mexican vacation home.This gives Manheimer ample opportunity to interact with Mexican, South American, and Dominican patients moving through Bellevue’s system. Many are undocumented, impoverished, and forced to endure abysmal working conditions. And I am looking at it from the point of view of wanting to live in the US myself but being restricted to six months. If I stay longer and get caught (and last year there was an issue with Immigration who said I had stayed the entire six months when I had left months before, easily cleared up, but worrying nonetheless) then I get banned for ten years. I'm self-supporting, don't need housing or benefits and I don't want to work. So for the US it's money in, not money out. You'd think I would be a desirable immigrant, but no....Sako, W.; Morigaki, R.; Mizobuchi, Y.; Tsuzuki, T.; Ima, H.; Ushio, Y.; Nagahiro, S.; Kaji, R.; Goto, S. Bilateral pallidal deep brain stimulation in primary Meige syndrome. Park. Relat. Disord. 2011, 17, 123–125. [ Google Scholar] [ CrossRef] [ PubMed]

The author is a doctor and was the head of the Bellevue Hospital in New York City for 14 years, I believe. This book dedicates a chapter each to one patient. One chapter focused on himself and his own bout with cancer.Andrews, C.; Aviles-Olmos, I.; Hariz, M.; Foltynie, T. Which patients with dystonia benefit from deep brain stimulation? A metaregression of individual patient outcomes. J. Neurol. Neurosurg. Psychiatry 2010, 81, 1383–1389. [ Google Scholar] [ CrossRef][ Green Version] I decided to read this book after finding out that the new TV series New Amsterdam is based on it. I can see some of the information in the chapters woven into some of the episodes my husband and I have watched. There are some hard truths in this book. I found it fascinating when Dr Manheimer was talking with Marta in the chapter Four Generations; about immigrants from Central America and the apparent propensity for diabetes and obesity. This spanned the four generations that the doctor knew about. There is a passage in the chapter that reads "The key strategy of the food industry has been taken from the legal, legislative, marketing, and risk-adjusted playbook of the tobacco wars." It talks about how junk food/sodas are marketed to the public and the rise in sedentary lifestyles and obesity.