A Fortunate Man: The Story of a Country Doctor

The book is in very good condition and the price is reasonable. Love it!

This book is an extended essay on the work of Dr. John Sassall, a country General Practicioner (GP), in a poor area of Britain. Integrated into this book are a series of often striking photographs taken by Berger's collaborator Jean Mohr. The photos complement Berger's insightful comments on Sassall's work. Berger and Mohr appear to have spent a good deal of time with Sassall and his patients and must have earned the trust, not only of Sassall, but of his patients. Berger terms Sassall "A Fortunate Man" not because of good luck or unusual talent but because Sassall is a person whose work is directly connected with basic existential questions and meaning. The portrait of Sassall is unsentimental, clear, and admiring. Sassall is not just a highly competent and dedicated physician, he is a man who feels compelled to use his occupational life in a quest to explore basic questions about the nature of human relationships and community. This need drives him to be an exceptionally good physician and to involve himself deeply in the life of his rather insular community. While Sassall is an unusual man and physician, many aspects of his experiences in dealing with patients cast light on doctor-patient relationships in general. As a physician, I found Berger's analysis of many of these issues insightful and useful. Berger proceeds to larger issues of how society values life and work. Berger's writing is unambiguous, direct, and informed by a considerable critical intelligence. The real measure of this book is that readers will find themselves drawn back to thinking about the questions that Berger raises.

This appeared on BBC radio as a five-part much-abridged and edited mini audiobook. I'm so glad I did, for I never would have known about this lovely book, and its recent reissue. It was moving and intimate, but also dealt with larger questions we all face in life. After I read it I gave it to my own primary care physician, and recommended it to two friends who are doctors. I recommend Googling the book and author in order to read about the origins of the original book. You'll find some articles at the Guardian (UK), including a recent appreciation of the author and book written by a physician, to accompany the recent re-publication of the book.

A Fortunate Man, first published in the late1960's has remained an enduring book which not only captures a time and place - a small village in the border country between England and Wales in the 1960's, but has become a book which in many ways is an archetypal essay about the relationship of the physician to himself, to the community and to the ideals and realities of practice. I have taught this book in medical school for almost 20 years, using it as a stimulus for young physicians to think about themselves and how they view their careers, looking forward. The photographs by Jean Mohr are among the most striking and emotional depictions of medicine in the late 20th century and the book has become a widely referenced example of combining narrative and photographs in the documentary style.Anyone who wishes to understand the essence of the doctor patient relationship or the doctor community relationship should own this book and read it. It is a classic.

As a practicing Family Physician, I can say that John Berger captures vividly that gray area of awareness in which we operate. Seldom are the efforts of a primary care provider clearly highlighted and valued beyond the moments shared between healer and patient. While understandably dated, the feelings of a doctor caring for the vulnerable are truly and respectfully reflected in the prose. The photos only add to the quietly dramatic story of one extraordinary physician carrying on the ancient practice - to heal, to relieve suffering, to walk along with our patients in their journey.

Not in the form you might expect from title but the author (who is not the subject of the story) is a talented writer and insightful observer of life. I liked it.

I am required to read this book for Clinical Skills class, but I just quit reading it when I got to part in the middle when the author talks about how ignorant the villagers are: "There are large sections of the English working and middle class who are INARTICULATE as a result of wholesale cultural deprivation. THEY ARE DEPRIVED OF THE MEANS OF TRANSLATING WHAT THEY KNOW INTO THOUGHTS THEY CAN THINK." WHAT?!?!?!?!?!? I am sure there are lessons to be learned from this book, but between the marginal-quality, occasionally cryptic writing and the scorn the author shows in passages like this, they're lost. Forget selling this book back to the bookstore... I'm taking it straight to the recycling bin. If there are good lessons in the end, I don't have the patience to read all the way through to get to them. And Lord help me if I ever become the kind of doctor this book describes.

This strikes me as a book to be read for people reckoning with career and life choices. It is a rich and complex look at a country doctor who has made a life of helping others, but not in some glorified Ghandi-like way-- this man is down to earth and the descriptions of his life are wonderfully down to earth too.

A fortunate Man: The Story of a Country Doctor. No it isn't, so buyers beware if you think you are getting a portrait of the life of a country doctor (sole practice) in the 1960's, describing his day-to-day work, cases, and life in general. Apart from the first section which briefly summarises a few visit and cases, the rest is a long and esoteric interpretation of what it means to be this doctor and how he comes to be regarded as a "good doctor".This is really a philosophical essay by Berger who ascribes his own interpretation to the motives, thoughts and reflections of John Sassal, the country GP who is the subject of this book. I struggled through two-thirds of it but having no background in philosophy I found it turgid and at times incomprehensible.The Afterword seemed to negate all that had gone before it and (as I see from another review) left out a vital piece of information.As for the monochrome photos, the quality of reproduction is not always good so, while they added to the text, they were to me superfluous.I wish I had read the Amazon reviews before buying this, rather than trusting a newspaper recommendation.

I heard part of 'A Fortunate Man' read on BBC Radio 4's A Book at Bedtime and became interested enough to buy a copy on Kindle. In spring 2020, doctors were news because of Coronavirus and GPS in particular were disappearing from our normal lives and being reorganised into the teams of health workers bent on saving us from the virus. General Practice was reduced to a telephone service backed up in my town by prescriptions and appointments with a duty doctor in centralised premises in the town if necessary. Now here in 'A Fortunate Man' I had encountered everyone's notion of the perfect GP, wise, relaxed, and interested in his patient. Here was a doctor who was truly part of the community whose influence extended from physical health of patients into mental health, social concerns, the world of work and even onto parks and gardens. Moreover he was not a fiction but a real case and being studied and written about by John Berger whose work I had admired for many years when a student of film. I also recalled his TV series Ways of Seeing. I felt I could trust the study of this doctor and was not disappointed. His work in a poor community in The Forest of Dean is carefully described and supported by the beautiful black and white photography of his friend. But Berger also tries to get through to what makes this doctors so beloved. He looks at the nature and value of fraternity, community and working amongst those whose health is his concern. I was glad to be reading on Kindle because of the ease with which one can look up words in a dictionary for this is not a coffee table book but a genuine study. I admired both the writer and his subject but felt that Berger missed out the consideration of the value of the doctor's own home and family life in making him such a beloved GP. Like Berger I was shocked by the end of the story which put a new light on all that I had read.

I was looking forward to reading this and ploughed into it. It didn't take long to find it arid and soulless. Berger misses the entire point of this doctor. Not once is the word love mentioned - even if it were just love if his work not a line on empathy on sheer human kindness. It's a dirt dry academic garble that signally fails to see the value of this doctor. I wonder what Dr. Sassal made of it himself? Dreadful, I should think.

What a writer! What a mind! John Berger is one of those writers whose style of writing enables you to hear his voice in your ear as you read.This is a story which means a lot to me as a retired GP. Some of the best years of my working life were working in a small Practice, attending home births, and home deaths, coming to understand people better when I visited them in their own homes and got to know the people they shared their lives with.How often have I wrestled with that question he poses about the border between enabling acceptance of a particular life, and challenging the conditions which contribute to, or even cause, the suffering?Ordinary doctors like this fortunate man always were, and still are, extraordinary. There's a lot we can learn about both the practice of Medicine and the place of GPs in this essay.This book should be on the Reading List for all medical students, and all doctors in training.John Berger's concluding thoughts about a society where choices are avoided or deferred hit the nail on the head. The questions about what makes a good doctor and how we value individual lives require us to think more clearly about what kind of society we want to create, and how we want to live our lives.

An essay about a country doctor. It starts well with some interesting incidents. But I feel it developed into the author's interpretation of what and who the doctor is, rather than describing further incidents and letting me make up my own mind.