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We have lost the ability to deal with death. Most of the dying spend their last days in general hospitals and nursing homes, in the care of strangers. They may not even know they are dying, victims of the kindly lie that there is still hope. They are often robbed of their dignity after a long series of excessive and hopeless medical interventions.
This is the starting point of Seamus O'Mahony's book on the western way of death. Dying has never been more exposed, with public figures writing memoirs of their illness, but in private we have done our best to banish all thought of death.
Dying has become medicalized and sanitized, but doctors cannot prescribe a "good death." The Way We Die Now asks us to consider how we have gotten to this age of spiritual poverty and argues that giving up our fantasies of control over death can help restore its significance.
We have lost the ability to deal with death. Most of the dying spend their last days in general hospitals and nursing homes, in the care of strangers. They may not even know they are dying, victims of the kindly lie that there is still hope. They are often robbed of their dignity after a long series of excessive and hopeless medical interventions.
This is the starting point of Seamus O'Mahony's book on the western way of death. Dying has never been more exposed, with public figures writing memoirs of their illness, but in private we have done our best to banish all thought of death.
Dying has become medicalized and sanitized, but doctors cannot prescribe a "good death." The Way We Die Now asks us to consider how we have gotten to this age of spiritual poverty and argues that giving up our fantasies of control over death can help restore its significance.
DR. SEAMUS O'MAHONY is a Consultant Gastroenterologist at Cork University Hospital. He is associate editor for medical humanities of the Journal of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh and is a regular contributor to the Dublin Review of Books. He is the author of The Way We Die Now.
"A valuable and thoughtful treatment that effectively draws on
O'Mahony's professional insights as well as his Irish Catholic
upbringing to provide glimpses into Western society's relationship
with mortality." --Library Journal
"The 'over-medicalization' of modern dying is at the core of
O'Mahony's criticism; he maintains that doctors might better help
their dying patients by giving up 'the quest to conquer nature' and
returning 'to a core function of providing comfort and succor.'
O'Mahony's clear-eyed analysis is important, poignant, and
immensely humane." --Publisher's Weekly, starred review "A
searingly honest, humane and challenging book to prompt a wider
conversation about death and dying." --The Guardian UK
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