Book Review: "God’s Hotel - A Doctor, a Hospital, and a Pilgrimage to the Heart of Medicine"

"God’s Hotel" by Victoria Sweet is a physician’s own account of the 20 years she spent practicing in San Francisco’s lower-tech but human-paced Luna Honda Hospital, the last almshouse in the country and a descendant of the Hotel-Dieu (God’s hotel) that cared for the sick in the Middle Ages. In a May, 2012 review, the New York Times called the book a “transcendent testament to health care past” and enthused that it’s “compulsively readable chapters go down like restorative sips of cool water, and its hard-core subversion cheers like a shot of gin”. Sioux Falls Family Doctor Patty Peters, MD, recently read the book and was eager to share her impressions with MED.