Edited by L E Cluff and R H Binstock. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001, £32.50, pp 260. ISBN 0–8018 6591–3

“Doctors cure and nurses care” was a phrase used to differentiate between medicine and nursing. Even though rhetorically we may well agree that doctors and nurses have their equal share in caring, literature on caring so far has been produced mainly from the perspective of nursing.

Now there is a book containing 11 essays on caring written or coauthored by seven medical doctors, two nurses, four social scientists, and two philosophers. The impressive list of authors is headed by the editors of the volume, Leighton Cluff (medical doctor and gerontologist) and Robert Binstock (political scientist and gerontologist). The volume includes authors who are well known scholars active in the field of medical ethics as well as clinicians and educators in various areas of health care facilities. The foreword by Rosalynn Carter, wife of ex President Jimmy Carter, gives the book its …