www.DonaldMiller.com

www.DonaldMiller.com

My book Heart in Hand
this book is dedicated to the memory of my sister, Nancy (1946-1978)

Heart in Hand delves into a variety of subjects–music, philosophy, religion, science, and my life as a heart surgeon.  I address bacteriology, evolutionary biology, physics, the music of Richard Wagner, and, in particular, the philosophy of Schopenhauer and Woody Allen’s films.  The book focuses on sex, religion, compassion, and art–four ways, as Schopenhauer shows us, humans can peek inside the castle of ultimate reality, where the secrets of the inner nature of the world and all things in it reside. Theologians, people who study philosophy and love music, and Woody Allen fans will enjoy reading this book.  Perhaps even some scientists as well.

You can download the book below, chapter by chapter, or print out all six chapters together, along with illustrations that are not in the published book. You can order hardback or paperback copies from amazon.com or directly from  the publisher, xlibris.com, either online or by phone: 1-888-795-4274.

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Download

The chapters of this book are in Adobe Acrobat format. To view them, you must have Adobe Acrobat Reader on your computer. If you do not have this, it can be downloaded and installed, free of charge, from http://www.adobe.com. Follow the installation instructions found at Adobe’s site, then return to this page and click on the chapters below that you would like to read. The pages in each chapter will be accessible in a printable Adobe formatted window.

Illustrations

Click the arrows on either side to scroll images.
Image5
I am examining a patient’s heart after the patient’s breast bone has been surgically divided and the chest spread open with a metal retractor.
Image6
Illustration of coronary bypass grafts by Dr. David Dillard for our Atlas of Cardiac Surgery, published in 1983.
Image7
My 101 year old patient, George Crosby, working on his farm, six months after his heart surgery
Image8
The Venus of Laussel, an 18-inch high bas-relief sculpture of a woman holding a bison horn. It was found on a sheltered wall of limestone in the Dordogne Valley in France and is more than 21,000 years old. Prehistoric religion specialists believe that the curved bison horn she is holding symbolizes both the crescent moon and the Universal Vulva, the source of all life. The horn is incised with thirteen marks, corresponding to the 13 lunar months in a year.
Image10
Neal Cassady and Jack Kerouac
Image11
This patient could not be weaned from the heart lung machine and subsequently died. This photograph, taken in 1984, shows a new type of heart assist device we had begun using at the time to try and save such patients. The cylindrical objects mounted on each side of the operating table, on the left side of the photograph, are right and left heart pumps.
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