A renowned diagnostician shares stories of his patients and explores the importance of the human factor in medicine

In The Art of Medicine, Toronto Western Hospital’s internist Dr. Herbert Ho Ping Kong draws on his vast dossier of personal cases and five decades as a clinician to examine the core principles of a patient-centered approach to diagnosis and treatment.

While HPK, as he is fondly known, recognizes and applauds the many invaluable innovations in medical technology, he makes the point that as disease and its management grow increasingly complex, physicians must learn to develop an arsenal of more basic skills, actively using the arts of seeing, hearing, palpation, empathy, and advocacy to provide a more humane and holistic form of care.

Aimed at medical practitioners, aspiring doctors, or anyone interested in health and medicine, this book also contains interviews with more than a dozen of HPK’s patients, as well as short essays that explore the thinking of his professional colleagues on the art of medicine.

Herbert Ho Ping Kong's profile page

Michael Posner is an award-winning writer, playwright, and journalist, and the author of nine previous books. These include the bestselling Mordecai Richler biography The Last Honest Man, and the Anne Murray biography All of Me, as well as the first two books in the Leonard Cohen, Untold Stories series, The Early Years, Vol. 1 and From This Broken Hill, Vol. 2. He was Washington Bureau Chief for Maclean’s magazine, and later served as its national, foreign, and assistant managing editor. He was also managing editor of the Financial Times of Canada for three years. He later spent sixteen years as a senior writer with The Globe and Mail (Toronto).

Michael Posner's profile page