Pale Faces

The Masks of Anemia

This book— the first volume in the Bellevue Literary Press Pathographies series—is at the forefront of the current popular trend in medical writing that includes the work of Jerome Groopman and Atul Gawande, in which doctors examine themselves and their profession to expose how science, art, and error come together in clinical treatment.

Though his is a more literary approach, like Jerome Groopman, Bardes is interested in “how doctors think” and in revealing the preconceptions and myths that sometimes get in the way of good medicine. He covers cultural and clinical bias as seen through the prism of history. Bardes also examines the language of doctor/patient communication and describes its impact on the healing process.

Bardes is a physician and medical school professor who is neither pedantic nor uncritical of the medical establishment, which he knows inside and out.