Book Review: Shocked (David Casarett)

I just read this book... no I haven't given up on Fry's book. I listened to this as an audiobook during a couple hikes this weekend.

This book examines the history of resuscitation. Mostly starting with the 18th century Holland. It covers (briefly, and not in medical detail) the current state of the art. And much of it is devoted to predicting where new advances will take us next.

There is much talk of CPR, of course, the workhorse of resuscitation. Advanced cardiac life support is discussed, not in the most flattering terms.

The speculative section mostly revolves around the most promising addition to modern ACLS, hypothermia. A few human cases to show where the science is at right now... lots of animal examples to show where it might be going.

Chapter 5 begins with these lines:

"It's a chilly late afternoon in March, and you're walking alone through a dark northern forest. The past few days have been warm and sunny, but there are still pockets of dirty snow under the tree trunks and around boulders. Everywhere you look there's an unbroken carpet of last fall's leaves covering the half-frozen mud beneath. You notice that with every step it's an effort to pull your boots free. You're getting tired. Night is coming on quickly, and the temperature has dropped 20 degrees in the past hour. The wind is working its way inexorably through your jacket, and you keep thinking that the road you're looking for should have appeared a long time ago. There's probably only an hour of daylight left, and you're trying to avoid the obvious conclusion: You're lost.

Then you hear a noise..."

I listened to that as I was hiking alone, in melting snow, in a place of never been before, searching for a road that I could never quite reach... just a little eerie.

The book also told the story of the development of Annie dolls, those CPR mannequins everyone trains with. The face is based on a death-mask of a woman who committed suicide by drowning in the 19th century. I'd heard the story before... it never quite sunk in at the time that this sculpture of her face was taken without her consent, used without her knowledge, reproduced the world over and kissed by hundreds of millions of people... I suspect she'd find it a little creepy.

Anyway, great book. Read it. Then take a CPR class. Then write your living will. Then go read Frankenstein.

Chapters Link
Audiobook Link