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God's Hotel: A Doctor, a Hospital, and a Pilgrimage to the Heart of Medicine Book Summary and Study Guide

Detailed plot synopsis reviews of God's Hotel: A Doctor, a Hospital, and a Pilgrimage to the Heart of Medicine


God's Hotel is the story of physician Victoria Sweet's journey to understand medieval and holistic medicine through research and an European pilgrimage walk and integrate it into her modern scientific practice, all set during the modernization of San Francisco's Laguna Honda hospital, which serves the poor, uninsured and chronically ill. God's Hotel follows physician Victoria Sweet as she works at San Francisco's Laguna Honda Hospital, a public facility serving the poor, uninsured and chronically ill. Inspired by how the place used to be a self-supporting charitable center run by nuns, Sweet embarks upon an academic research project to understand the holistic, nature-based medicine practiced during the medieval days of Hildegard's order, and how and why it became replaced by modern science.
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Her research includes tracking down copies of Hildegard and other nuns' original writings and reading them in their original languages. They date from a time when convents provided one of the only ways a woman could become educated in the sciences and practice medicine. She also takes several months off to retrace the route of medieval pilgrims, hiking with the faithful through Western Europe, eventually reaching Compostela, a religious shrine to the Virgin Mary in France.

Meanwhile, she's treating patients at Laguna Honda, and the entire book contains the patients' stories. There's a lady in a wheelchair who has survived homelessness, drug addiction and domestic violence, who gets up the courage to heal physically and mentally. There's an elderly woman who underwent a lobotomy in the 1950s for being an 'uncompliant wife' and spent the rest of her life moaning incoherently. And a mentally ill man who is perfectly healthy when medicated, but while off his schizophrenia medications believes himself to be a vending machine and eats coins off the street. This inspires a compassionate discussion of the balance between patient care and patient freedom of choice.

The book never loses sight of the patients' humanity. An elderly patient couple marries within the hospital's courtyard, with staff and doctors as attendants. A traveling student from Cameroon, upon learning there is no treatment for her painful parasitic infection, accepts the news with grace and dignity. Others have compelling, heartfelt stories, and come back to thank the doctors and nurses when they get well. Patients, and doctors, come from all sorts of countries and backgrounds, and learn to understand each other.

While Dr. Sweet researches medieval medicine and serves the sick, Laguna Honda experiences city-mandated physical, architectural and organizational modernization. On the one hand this brings in a more modern building and more lifesaving technology. However, some of the human touches the hospital is known for, such as offering extra nurses to keep patients company or having a garden where they can work, are lost in the process. Dr. Sweet keeps an open mind throughout the process, and doesn't completely reject the modernization, but sees it as a sign of a completely changing paradigm in medicine that is not totally positive.

At the very end, she outlines what she has gathered from her research into medieval convent medicine. The paradigm of treating the body as a set of humors and fluids to be balanced, in sickness and health, and to be healed with rest, good food and cheer when medicine is not available (and in conjunction with medicine, when it is) came out of tending a garden. When agriculture began to be replaced with industrialization, the body began to be seen as a machine with parts to be fixed, cleaned or replaced. This brought about many interesting changes in medicine and patient care, both positive and negative.
Best part of story, including ending: I loved the book because Dr. Sweet kept an open mind. She didn't lament the terrible, old backward hospital, nor did she rail against all modernization as inhumane. She had specific reasons for each opinion she held, which she explained in clear, nonmedical language. Also, the book was beautifully written, with wonderful stories.

Best scene in story: My favorite scene was the wedding between two patients. Both were chronically ill and could not leave the hospital, and had fallen in love while receiving treatment. The doctors and nurses helped the couple to get clothing, music and food and invited others to the ceremony. Loved that scene because it showed that people with chronic illness aren't so different from the rest of us and often want to have regular lives.

Opinion about the main character: Dr. Victoria Sweet was incredibly balanced, humane, and insightful, both about medieval society and about modern medicine.

The review of this Book prepared by Cristina Deptula a Level 1 Blue Jay scholar

Chapter Analysis of God's Hotel: A Doctor, a Hospital, and a Pilgrimage to the Heart of Medicine

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Plot & Themes

job/profession:    -   doctor/nurse Job/profession/poverty story    -   Yes Period of greatest activity?    -   1950+

Subject of Biography

Gender    -   Female Profession/status:    -   doctor Ethnicity    -   White Nationality    -   American

Setting

How much descriptions of surroundings?    -   7 () United States    -   Yes City?    -   Yes City:    -   dirty, grimy (like New York) Century:    -   1980's-Present

Writing Style

Book makes you feel?    -   encouraged Pictures/Illustrations?    -   Some in color 1-5 How much dialogue in bio?    -   roughly even amounts of descript and dialog How much of bio focuses on most famous period of life?    -   51%-75% of book

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Victoria Sweet Books Note: the views expressed here are only those of the reviewer(s).
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