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Start gifting33 Meditations on Death
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Learn moreBrought to you by Penguin.
“Brilliant - a grimly humourous yet humane account of the realities of growing old in the modern age. Everybody over the age of 60 should read it and ponder their probable future.” - Henry Marsh
What is a good death? How would you choose to live your last few months? How do we best care for the rising tide of very elderly?
This unusual and important book is a series of reflections on death in all its forms: the science of it, the medicine, the tragedy and the comedy. Dr David Jarrett draws on family stories and case histories from his thirty years of treating the old, demented and frail to try to find his own understanding of the end. And he writes about all the conversations that we, our parents, our children, the medical community, our government and society as a whole should be having.
Profound, provocative, strangely funny and astonishingly compelling, it is an impassioned plea that we start talking frankly and openly about death. And it is a call to arms for us to make radical changes to our perspective on ‘the seventh age of man’.
© David Jarrett 2020 (P) Penguin Audio 2020
David Jarrett has been a doctor for forty years, thirty of which as an NHS consultant in geriatric and stroke medicine. He is a clinician, teacher, examiner and former medical manager with extensive experience of frailty, death and dying and the modern world’s failure to confront the realities. He has also worked in Canada, India, Africa and the USSR. He is married with two children and lives in Hampshire during the week, and in London at weekends.