Autopsy of War A Personal History

A profound and unflinching memoir of a physician's wartime work in Vietnam and his forty-year struggle with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Navy physician John Parrish served in Vietnam, an experience that seared him to the bone. In the ensuing four decades, Parrish became recognized as one of the most innovative physicians in his field, yet he was tortured by PTSD. Fighting the mental devastation of war, Parrish lived virtually homeless at times, visited veterans' shelters and fled his family while reliving his Vietnam experience in a series of harrowing flashbacks. Autopsy of Waris a soul searching and intensely personal journey through the world of war and recovery.

JOHN A. PARRISH, M.D., is the CEO of the Center for the Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology (CIMIT); the CEO of the Red Sox Foundation-Massachusetts General Hospital Home Base Program; and Distinguished Professor of Dermatology and former department head at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. He is the author of 12, 20 & 5: A Doctor's Year in Vietnam.

“Dr. Parrish offers an astonishingly honest and candid depiction of the invisible wounds of war through the lens of his own personal struggles and his clinical work treating returning warriors. It’s an inspirational first-hand account which should help destigmatize psychological disorders and not just encourage those in need to seek help, but assure them that brighter days can lay ahead.” —Senator John Kerry

"Dr. John Parrish has once again shown remarkable courage. He writes about his own sufferings with painful candor, from death incomprehensible to him as a child to carnage witnessed as a combat surgeon. He is honest about his “impotence and rage,” grieving for those he cannot save. He remains committed to caring for warriors living with “invisible wounds” of war. His book is not really an “Autopsy.” It is a prescription for life." —Congressman Michael E. Capuano

"As a combat physician from Operation Iraqi Freedom, "Autopsy of War" has awakened many of my own reflections on our ultimate powerlessness, but also of our never ending hope and genuine desire to ease the suffering of our fellow warriors and thereby heal our own wounds from having born witness to the inhumanity of war.  Dr. Parrish bravely confesses his personal journey of grief, despair, and redemption... a journey taken by warriors past, present, and regrettably... future.  This is the burden of the warrior class, so that we may live in a civilized society." —Colonel John C. Bradley, MD, Chair, Department of Psychiatry, Walter Reed National Military Medical Center