At the novel's end, Perowne operates on the brain of a man who had threatened the lives of his family; Bach's "Goldberg Variations" plays in the operating theatre, producing a self-annihilating trance, a "dream of absorption that has dissolved all sense of time".
In the past, GoFundMe has been used for some pretty noble projects, such as collecting donations for one of the victims of the Boston Marathon Bombing, and helping raise money to operate on the brain tumor of a morbidly obese 12-year-old.
But this is not a gloomy book, it is a testimony of wonder – the wonder Marsh has felt through being able to operate on the brain.
And I certainly wouldn't want a surgeon who might rush in and operate on the wrong side of the brain.
Dr. Arbit's lawyer, Anthony Scher, said last night: "There was an investigation into this issue and it is absolutely clear that he did not operate on the wrong side of the brain.
Macewen, in 1893, recorded 19 patients operated on for brain abscess, 18 of whom were cured; at that time most other surgeons had 100 percent mortality rates for the condition.
The pattern-processing mechanisms of the brain operate on the two-dimensional retinal image, which means that two-dimensional image plane information is analyzed much more efficiently than depth information.
The state began investigating the doctor, Ehud Arbit, last year after it received complaints that he had operated on the wrong side of the brain of a patient a year ago at Staten Island University Hospital, where he was chief of neurosurgery.
"These are not doctors who carved their initials on a patient's abdomen or operated on the wrong side of the brain," the assemblyman continued.
In other cases, surgeons removed a healthy ovary, operated on the wrong side of the brain, fused the wrong vertebrae and did procedures on the wrong eye, knee, foot, elbow and hand.
