Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures

Winner of the 2006 Scotiabank Giller Prize

An astonishing literary debut centred around four students as they apply to medical school, qualify as doctors and face the realities of working in medicine, from a powerful voice in fiction.

Following the interlinked stories of a group of medical students and the unique challenges they face, from the med school to the intense world of emergency rooms, evac missions, and terrifying new viruses. Riveting, convincing and precise, Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures looks with rigorous honesty at the lives of doctors and their patients, bringing us to a deeper understanding of the challenges and temptations that surge around us all.

In this masterful collection, Vincent Lam weaves together black humour, investigations of both common and extraordinary moral dilemmas, and a sometimes shockingly realistic portrait of today’s medical profession.

Dr. Vincent Lam was born in London, Ontario, and grew up in Ottawa. His family is from the expatriate Chinese community of Vietnam. Dr. Lam did his medical training in Toronto, and is an emergency physician who also does international air evacuation work and expedition medicine on Arctic and Antarctic ships. His non-fiction has appeared in The Globe and Mail, the National Post, and The University of Toronto Medical Journal. His fiction has been published in Carve. Dr. Lam’s first novel, about a Chinese compulsive gambler and headmaster of an English school in Saigon during the Vietnam War, will be published by Doubleday Canada in 2007. He and his wife live in Toronto.


From the Hardcover edition.