Rising from the Flames: The Experience of the Severly Burned: The Experience of the Severely Burned - Softcover

Carter, Albert Howard III; Petro, Jane A.; Carter, III Albert Howard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0812215176 ISBN 13: 9780812215175

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998

Synopsis

"The book should be required reading for every clinician, medical student, social worker, and therapist who cares for injured patients, and especially for those who care for burned patients. It also should be made widely available in bookstores for anyone who has empathy for the ill and infirm or curiosity about burns."--Journal of the American Medical Association Although medical advances have remarkably increased the survival rate of the severely burned, such patients still encounter physical and psychological pain and disability, disfigurement, and social rejection. Rising from the Flames examines the experience of the severely burned as survivors confront it, not just as a medical event but as a human ordeal involving social, cultural, psychological, and medical trauma. It discusses the causes of burns, the physiology of injury and healing, the forms of isolation burn patients endure, and the cultural meaning attached to burns and burned persons.

About this title

Review

"The book should be required reading for every clinician, medical student, social worker, and therapist who cares for injured patients, and especially for those who care for burned patients. It also should be made widely available in bookstores for anyone who has empathy for the ill and infirm or curiosity about burns."--Journal of the American Medical Association

From the Author

The JAMA has called this book a must read!
JAMA

Latest news In this issue Table of Contents Past issues Instructions for Authors Information on Letters to the Editor

About JAMA Subscribe Advertising Classified Ads Reader Services Search

Books, Journals, New Media - January 6, 1999

Burns

Rising From the Flames: The Experience of the Severely Burned, by Albert Howard Carter III, and Jane Arbuckle Petro, 229 pp, with illus, paper, $23, ISBN 0-8122-1517-6, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998.

When I first received this book, the question arose as to whether it was sufficiently "medical" to review in a medical journal. After reading it, it is my opinion that the book should be required reading for every clinician, medical student, social worker, and therapist who cares for injured patients, and especially for those who care for burned patients. It also should be made widely available in bookstores for anyone who has empathy for the ill and infirm or curiosity about burns.

Most of the book summarizes the history and development of burn treatment with even more important and unique sections interspersed. These emphasize "the pain, the self-questioning, the monstrous appearance, the anger and despair, as well as the inner resources that somehow developed and held firm through the long ordeal" of severe burn injury. Unlike the usual treatise on burn treatment, the psychological and personal aspects of severe burns are emphasized. This is done by presenting case histories of individual patients, which incorporate the scientific background of the specific treatments rendered. Also summarized is the progress in burn treatment in recent times, begun by Dr Curtis Artz, Dr Truman Blocker, and the Shrine Temple of the Masons and continuing through the development of cultured-skin grafts.

Throughout the book, biblical and classical quotations, reproductions of famous art works, and stories from history and mythology are interwoven with scientific facts about burns, giving the reader, in fact, an eerie feeling. Burns as perceived in both art and literature, "the Napalm girl," and the self-immolations in Saigon during the Vietnam War are all discussed. The case of "Tim," a severely burned Jehovah's Witness, described in one chapter, is both a triumph and a tragedy. Those who care for burns understand only too well the euphoria of success followed by the bitter letdown of failure.

Clearly, burn injury exacts a high price. Rising From the Flames presents no moral discussion of the boundaries at which costs to society exceed value returned. Rather, the terrible psychological price exacted on those who are burned is vividly discussed, emphasized, and illustrated.

Rising From the Flames is a unique scholarly publication, a blended approach to burns, with material one would expect from an academic department of classics or philosophy and from a school of medicine. Once begun, one cannot put it down, carried along by a well-wrought structure and flowing, often beautiful prose, even for horrific injuries. The book is a high-quality, handsome, attention-grabbing volume. I am grateful to have been asked to review this unusual and interesting book about which there can be no controversy.

Martin S. Litwin, MD Tulane University Medical School New Orleans, La

(JAMA. 1999;281:88)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Continue reviews Table of Contents © 1995-1999 American Medical Association. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0812215176
• ISBN 13: 9780812215175
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 244