BOOK AND MEDIA REVIEWS On Being Ill, With Notes From Virginia Woolf’s mother, Julia Stephen, Sick Rooms by Julia Stephen served as a vocational nurse at the end of Virginia Woolf the 19th century. Although she had no formal Ashfield, MA, Paris Press, 2012, 122 pp., $16, paperback. training in nursing, she cared for many pa- tients over many years and recorded what she I recently strained learned in a short essay titled Notes From Sick my lower back on the Rooms (1883). Whereas Woolf discusses what tennis court as I was it feels like to be ill, and how illness chang- reaching for a back- es one’s perceptions, Stephen shares practi- hand shot. The mo- cal advice on how to care for a sick person. ment it happened, She provides instruction on how to attend to I fell to the ground the smallest details of nursing, details that in excruciating pain. increase the comfort and care of the patient. Lying on the ground, There are short sections on reducing noise, looking up and into light, and even crumbs in the bed. “Nothing the irritating glare of is small in illness,” she writes. She offers a the overhead lights, I “patient-centered approach” to nursing and thought: “Can I move medicine, long before it became a philosophy my legs? Why are the of care today. lights so bright? Is this the end of my tennis There are only two essays in this short book, game, a game I’ve enjoyed since childhood?” and it is the 10th Anniversary Edition of the Illness and injury change the way patients two works published together. I would read perceive themselves and the world. Patients Stephen’s essay first. Stephen’s approach to often feel vulnerable, fearful, and uncertain care is surprisingly modern in its emphasis about the future. When ill, they may become on attending to the individual needs of every more sensitive to light, noises, and the per- patient. Her practical, low-tech advice on ways sons caring for them. In her essay On Being Ill to ease a patient’s pain and suffering will reso- (1930), Virginia Woolf—the early 20th century nate with health care professionals. Both es- novelist best known for literary classics such says enhance the reader’s understanding of as Mrs Dalloway and To the Lighthouse—uses what it means to be ill. Some readers may be her literary talents to describe what it feels put off by Woolf’s frequent literary referenc- like to be ill. She reminds us that “We do not es. However, there are introductory chapters know our own souls, let alone the souls of oth- to both essays and an afterword to help with ers.” She bemoans the fact that authors in the interpretation. Clinicians, faculty, or medical past have devoted little attention to the subject students not interested in the literary and his- of illness. Woolf herself suffered from severe torical details can easily skip the introductions depression and bipolar disorder. She writes without sacrificing lessons gained by reading how illness alters the routines and perceptions both essays. of everyday life, allowing patients to see things Julia Stephen died when Virginia Woolf was they previously ignored or took for granted: 13 years old. She never had the opportunity “Ordinarily to look at the sky for any length to nurse her adult daughter through the ups of time is impossible. Pedestrians would be im- and downs of her mental illness. Reading these peded and disconcerted by a public sky-gazer. enlightening essays is an exercise in empathy, What snatches we get of it are mutilated by made more poignant by the fact that they were chimneys and churches… Now, lying recum- written by mother and daughter and by the bent, staring straight up, the sky is discovered tragedy of Virginia Woolf’s suicide in 1941 at to be something so different from this that re- the age of 59. ally it is a little shocking. This has been going Dean Gianakos, MD on all the time without our knowing it!” Lynchburg Family Medicine Residency Lynchburg, VA Reviewers interested in writing reviews for publication should contact Book and Media Reviews Editor William E. Cayley, Jr, MD, at [email protected]. Publishers who wish to submit books for possible inclusion in Family Medicine’s book reviews section should send texts to Jan Cartwright, Society of Teachers of Family Medicine, 11400 Tomahawk Creek Parkway, Suite 540, Leawood, KS 66211. [email protected]. All books reviewed in this column are available for purchase at amazon.com through the STFM portal at www.stfm.org/bookstore. 214 MARCH 2013 • VOL. 45, NO. 3 FAMILY MEDICINE.