"San Francisco's Laguna Honda Hospital is the last almshouse in the country, a descendant of the Hotel-Dieu (God's Hotel) that cared for the sick in the Middle Ages. Ballet dancers and rock musicians, professors and thieves--"anyone who had fallen, or, often, leapt, onto hard times" and needed extended medical care-ended up here. So did Victoria Sweet, who came for two months and stayed for twenty years.Laguna Honda, lower tech but human paced, gave...

"A critical care doctor's riveting stories about what it means to be saved by modern medicine"--Jacket flap.

"Out of the crucible of medical training, award-winning writer Terrence Holt shapes this ... account of residency, the years-long ordeal in which doctors are made. 'Amid all the mess and squalor of the hospital, with its blind random unraveling of lives,' [this book] finds the compassion from which doctors discover the strength to care"--Dust jacket flap.