God's Hotel by Victoria Sweet

God's Hotel by Victoria Sweet is probably one of the best books on medicine that I have every read. Medicine at it's heart is supposed to be about healing. But anyone who has interacted with medicine in the last decade or so encounters insurance problems, short visits, impatient providers, and high costs. My own interactions with local doctors did not provide the healing I sought. Since I did not fit the diagnostic criteria for a "problem", I was shrugged off. It wasn't until I found a doctor that ran her practice in the same spirit as Victoria Sweet that I started to find healing.

God's Hotel is part autobiography, part medicine, part history. Victoria Sweet was hired to work at San Francisco's Laguna Honda Hospital. This hospital cared for the very poor, indigent people of the community. It was a place of last resort for many. This is where Sweet discovered slow medicine and how to help people heal.

One particular story in the book has stuck with me. A woman with many health problems came in with extremely bad bed sores. So bad that she would most likely be severely disfigured, disabled, or dead. She could not lie on her back at all. Laying face down over a period of months, her sores were treated and she healed. Spending all that time staring at the floor beneath her, the patient came to the understanding of how she needed to change her life to improve her health. In this case mind and body were healed.

Such a health care situation would likely not happen today with hospital metrics and outcomes. Sweet discusses the transition of Laguna Honda hospital to a more modern hospital with ever increasing pressure from bean counters and administrators. She details her journey through her experiences in medicine alongside. The result is a moving journey that makes you think about what it means to heal and to be healed.

Book Rating: 5 stars - everyone in medicine should read this book.


The books I select for review are books which I personally select from my local library. I do not receive any reimbursement from authors or publishers or free books. I do provide links to Amazon as a convenience to the readers of this blog. I do earn a small referral pittance which is not even enough to buy a soda.