33 Meditations on Death: Notes from the Wrong End of Medicine

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By an eminent geriatric consultant, 33 Meditations on Death is a call to arms for us to discuss and plan how we improve our end of life. Dr. Jarrett has a humane outlook and advocates against subjecting people to prolonged deaths that involve only extended treatments and extended suffering. Interestingly, it's the one chapter about someone who didn't die, which recounts his own experience being successfully treated by the NHS (Britain's National Health Service) that helpfully reminds us that, while he has focussed on people at the ends of their lives, sometimes medical treatments work and people do recover.

Profound, provocative, strangely funny and astonishingly compelling, it is an impassioned plea that we start talking frankly and openly about death. He writes about all the conversations that we, our parents, our children, the medical community, our government and society as a whole should be having. And it is a call to arms for us to make radical changes to our perspective on 'the seventh age of man'. Compelling reflections on the dignity of human life, and the emotional inevitability of its end. Professor Stephen WestabyThere is a great deal of sound thinking, alongside compassion and humour in the stories that come from Jarrett’s long service in geriatric and stroke care. “We are obsessed by mortality in modern health services, when we should be paying greater attention to quality of life. One is very easy to measure and the other virtually impossible,” he suggests. A remarkably likeable guide to a grisly subject ... daunting, yet ultimately life-affirming Independent A remarkably likeable guide to a grisly subject ... daunting, yet ultimately life-affirming" - Independent

It is striking how the candour of our public discourse fails when we get on to the subject of death, a significant and puzzling failure for it is the fate we all share. David Jarrett's 33 Meditations, the fruit of forty years of professional experience with people at the end of their lives, is not only timely and important, but hugely enjoyable. One of the most memorable books I've read recently. The Revd Richard Coles This unusual and important book is a series of reflections on death in all its forms- the science of it, the medicine, the tragedy and the comedy. Dr David Jarrett draws on family stories and case histories from his thirty years of treating the old, demented and frail to try to find his own understanding of the end. In a nutshell, he is asking us, why are we obsessed with prolonging human lifespans and dying with indignity, more often these days with progressive and irreversible cognitive impairment? Shouldn’t we expect, and even demand, a better end of life for ourselves and our loved ones?

The second line appeared on my lateral flow test. I grabbed a few essentials from the kitchen and retired to bed. As symptoms circulated around my bronchial passages, I reached for ‘33 Meditations on Death: Notes From the Wrong End of Medicine’ by David Jarrett. Covid 19 does not appear until the final chapter, but contemplating age and vulnerability proactively are themes of the book. An extraordinary, unflinching rumination that brings us into a more companionable relationship with death, and in doing so helps us to live. There is a deceptive lightness to David's writing which keeps us in easy company, undoes much of its mystery, and helps us in that most vital adult project: to face our mortality. This book will stay with you. Derren Brown This unusual and important book is a series of reflections on death in all its forms: the science of it, the medicine, the tragedy and the comedy. Dr David Jarrett draws on family stories and case histories from his thirty years of treating the old, demented and frail to try to find his own understanding of the end.