The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer

by Siddhartha Mukherjee

Every evening, Farber came to the wards, forcefully driving his own sailless boat through this rough and uncharted sea. He paused at each bed, taking notes and discussing the case, often barking out characteristically brusque instructions. A retinue followed him: medical residents, nurses, social workers, psychiatrists, nutritionists, and pharmacists. Cancer, he insisted, was a total disease—an illness that gripped patients not just physically, but psychically, socially, and emotionally. Only a multipronged, multidisciplinary attack would stand any chance of battling this disease. He called the concept “total care.” But despite all efforts at providing “total care,” death stalked the wards relentlessly. In the winter of 1956, a few weeks after David’s visit, a volley of deaths hit Farber’s clinic. Betty, a child with leukemia, was the first to die. Then it was Jenny, the four-year-old with the aluminum teakettle. Teddy, with retinoblastoma, was next. A week later, Axel, another child with leukemia, bled to death, with hemorrhages in his mouth. Goldstein observed, “Death assumes shape, form, and routine. Parents emerge from their child’s room, as they have perhaps done periodically for days for short rests. A nurse takes them to the doctor’s small office; the doctor comes in and shuts the door behind him. Later, a nurse brings coffee. Still later, she hands the parents a large brown paper bag, containing odds and ends of belongings. A few minutes later, back at our promenad...