On Wednesday, November 8th at 7:30pm Warwick's will host Victoria Sweet to discuss and sign her new book Slow Medicine. Victoria Sweet was a physician at San Francisco's Laguna Honda Hospital for more than twenty years, an experience she chronicled in God's Hotel. An associate clinical professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, she is also a prizewinning historian with a Ph.D. in history and social medicine, and the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. This event is free and open to the public.  Reserved Seating is available when the book is pre-ordered from Warwick's for the event. Only books purchased from Warwick's will be signed. Please call the Warwick's Book Dept. (858) 454-0347 for details.

In Slow Medicine, Sweet unpacks her vision for how healing works and delves into why we must rethink how our healthcare system treats patients. Like Slow Food and related movements, Slow Medicine—in which Sweet is regarded as a pioneer—prizes time and depth over rapid judgment and assumption. Slow Medicine encompasses craft as well as science, vocation as well as profession. It prioritizes patients, takes the contexts of their lives into account, and acknowledges that each body tells a unique story that cannot be captured in electronic charts but must be “read” firsthand.

Slow Medicine offers memorable, enlightening, and concerning stories of patients, nurses, doctors and teachers. Their experiences, and hers, reveal her path to understanding the healing vocation and at the same time underscore the takeover of the medical field by healthcare administrators, whose reign has undermined the care patients are given. Sweet’s deeply engaging stories powerfully illustrate her argument that we need both Fast and Slow Medicine to create truly effective, humane and sustainable healing.