"In his decades of medical practice, Marsh has been a witness or a party to almost every kind of mistake."

"There are errors of commission (the hubristic removal of too much tumor) and of omission (the missed diagnosis). There are errors that go unreported (after a successful surgery, Marsh might decide not to tell a patient about a close call) and errors for which Marsh is held accountable. (He writes that, after one operation, 'I told them to sue me. I told them I had made a terrible mistake.') There are errors of delegation�as when Marsh allows a resident to perform a simple spinal surgery, and the patient is left with a paralyzed foot�and historical errors: at a mental hospital, Marsh encounters victims of lobotomy. One morning, Marsh operates after having a petty argument with another surgeon, and the operation paralyzes half the patient�s face. He writes, 'Perhaps this was going to happen anyway�it is called a "recognized complication" of that particular operation�but I know that I was not in the right state of mind to carry out such dangerous and delicate surgery, and when I saw the patient on the ward round in the days afterwards, and saw his paralyzed face, paralyzed and disfigured, I felt a deep sense of shame.'"

From a New Yorker article by Joshua Rothman � "Anatomy of Error/A surgeon remembers his mistakes" � about a book by the neurosurgeon Henry Marsh titled "Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death, and Brain Surgery."