The Dressing Station

Winner of the Alan Paton Award and the South African Booksellers Choice Award Winner of the Alan Paton Award and the South African Booksellers Choice AwardJonathan Kaplan has been a hospital surgeon, a flying doctor, a ship's medical officer and a battlefield surgeon. He has worked in places as diverse as Burma, Kurdistan, America, Mozambique, England and Eritrea. The Dressing Station presents a vivid, moving account of the varied faces of medicine he has encountered. In a mixture of reportage, confession and exposition Kaplan talks about the practice of medicine and of its shortcomings, because medicine is not always benign or balanced. At its extremes it is a process of treating the casualties, for life is a war, and being a doctor is serving in that war. 'His account is born of two talents: to save lives and to bear witness. The result is a unique mixture of biography and reportage, both personal and clinical' Time Magazine