Do No Harm (book)

Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death, and Brain Surgery is a 2014 memoir written by Henry Marsh and published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson. The book details the author's career as a neurosurgeon.

Marsh's father was a human rights lawyer and his mother a refugee from Nazi Germany. Marsh finished a bachelor's degree. When his studies finished he spent two years working in the National Archive. He spent a year in Africa teaching as a volunteer, and then studied Politics, Economics, and Philosophy at the University of Oxford. After a life crisis, he became a stretcher-bearer in a hospital and discovered an interest in medicine, finding "... its controlled and altruistic violence deeply appealing. It seemed to involve excitement and job security, a combination of manual and mental skills, and power and social status as well."^[1] He decided to study medicine, but because he lacked O-levels or A-levels in science, he was rejected by London Medical Schools. Instead he enrolled in the Royal Free Medical School. After medical school, he joined a surgical firm in his teaching hospital.

He discusses ethical dilemmas: for example, when a 96-year-old woman needs surgery, but would prefer to die at home instead. Marsh's three-month-old son William was admitted to the local hospital, where he had a tumour removed five days later, which was diagnosed as a choroid plexus papilloma. Marsh experienced the anguish that parents endure when their children are patients: "Anxious and angry relatives are a burden all doctors must bear, but having been one myself was an important part of my medical education. Doctors, I tell my trainees with a laugh, can't suffer enough."^[2]

Critical reception was positive.^[3][4] Karl Ove Knausgård praised the book, stating that the work has "true honesty in an unexpected place".^[5] The work has also received praise from The Observer and The Daily Telegraph; in the latter, Nicholas Blincoe called it "an elegant series of meditations at the closing of a long career".^[6][7] Michiko Kakutani was also favorable, writing that while the book "may unsettle readers" it would "at the same time leave them with a searing appreciation of the wonders of the human body, and gratitude that there are surgeons like Henry Marsh using their hard-won expertise to save and repair lives."^[8]

• 2015 Winner of the PEN Ackerley Prize^[9]
• Finalist for the Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize
• 2015 Finalist for the Wellcome Book Prize^[10]
• Financial Times Best Business Book of the Year^[11]
• Economist Best Book of the Year
• 2015 Washington Post Notable Book of the Year^[12]
• New York Times Notable Book of the Year