YOU CAN'T NOT KNOW

Spenser returns with a second memoir in which he relives four pivotal years as a resident pathologist at Atlanta’s Southeastern Medical Center during the 1970s.

The author sardonically quips that he delivered a “solid…not great or outstanding…just solid” performance during his years at Ivory Medical School in Dallas. Nonetheless, he scored a pathology residency with Southeastern, his first choice. Presiding over Southeastern’s pathology department was the illustrious and feared Dr. Darrell Hollis, who proved to be an extraordinary teacher. Spenser focuses his remembrance on Hollis’ rigorous and demanding teaching style, and his insistence that pathologists must always be able to provide answers. Spenser’s own career as a pathologist is based on this key notion, which provides the book’s title: “Dr. Hollis with his commandment ‘you can’t not know’ found a dedicated disciple.” In a series of illustrative vignettes, the author effectively brings readers into the lectures and laboratory work that defined his time at Southeastern, and he does so with a sense of humor and reverence. Even lay readers will pick up intriguing bits of information from the engaging pathological reviews. For example, a young woman arrived at the hospital after fainting, and there appeared to be an unexplained lung obstruction; in a biopsy, Hollis discovered talc crystals, used “as a bulking and lubricating agent” in oxycodone. If a drug user injects the drug, Spenser explains, the talc winds up clogging the lungs’ small capillaries. There are many other extensive medical and pathological descriptions over the course of the narrative, and although these are consistently informative, they’re often not for the squeamish. The author gets bonus points, though, for his philosophical musings about the changes in medicine, and the world, since the 1970s.

A frequently engaging work that will appeal most to aspiring pathologists and other clinicians.