This book aims to draw attention to issues relating to illness and pain, which almost inevitably most of us will be obliged to face at some time in our lives. It discusses the art of medicine and goes back to the Platonic notion of anamnesis; it describes how “constellations” of symptoms, reflecting the position of the patient, come to form the diagnosis. It also talks about the gift of prognosis, which invariably evokes admiration among laymen. The author tells us how helpless a doctor can be and how he sometimes has to grope in the dark for an answer. Time and again he refers us to

Catharsis is a masterful restoration of the old etymological links that exist between what is hale and healthy and holy. Andrzej Szczeklik is professor of medicine, but he is also expert in “the science of the feelings,” which was how William Wordsworth defined poetry. His book is erudite, imaginative, intimate, authoritative; at once a reverie about the roots and responsibilities of doctoring, and a timely reminder that health care involves caritas before it involves the economy.




I once wrote a line in a poem that went: „I prefer talking to doctors about something else...” In those days I didn’t know Doctor Andrzej Szczeklik personally, or his book, as it hadn’t come into existence yet. Now that I’ve read it, I’m convinced that Doctor Szczeklik is not only capable of talking „about something else”, but also of talking „about THIS”, and he can do it beautifully and fascinatingly.

Professor Andrzej Szczeklik was born in Cracow on 29 July, 1938. He graduated from the Medical Faculty of the Cracow Academy of Medicine, and continued his education in the USA and Sweden. Now he is Head of the 2nd Internal Diseases Department of the Collegium Medicum at the Jagiellonian University. From 1990 to 1993 he was Rector of the Cracow Academy of Medicine; and from 1993 to 1996 Deputy Rector of the Jagiellonian University in charge of the Collegium Medicum. Since 1995 he has held the post of National Consultant for Internal Diseases. He is a member of the Papal Academy of Sciences, The Polish Academy of Sciences and other scientific and research associations in Poland and abroad. His professional interests include the cardiovascular diseases of the respiratory tract, the coagulation of the blood and medical genetics. He is the author of some 550 original articles and papers published mainly in international specialist periodicals, and the editor of books published in Poland, the USA and the United Kingdom. He has received many prestigious awards, including the 1998 FNP Award.