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In Lifelines Harris Solomon takes readers into the trauma ward of one of Mumbai's busiest public hospitals, narrating the stories of the patients, providers, and families who experience and care for traumatic injuries due to widespread traffic accidents. He traces trauma's moves after the accident: from scenes of road and railway injuries to ambulance interiors; through emergency triage, surgery, and intensive care; and from the morgue for patients who do not survive into the homes of those who do. These pathways reveal how trauma shifts inequalities, infrastructures, and institutions through the lives and labors of clinical spaces. Solomon contends that medicine itself must be understood in terms of lifelines: patterns of embodied movement that determine survival. In reflecting on the centrality of traffic to life, Lifelines explores a fundamental question: How does medicine move us?
List of contents
Note on Illustrations ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction: The Traffic of Trauma 1
1. Carrying: The Lifelines of Transfer 27
2. Shifting: The Lifelines of Triage 53
3. Visiting: The Lifelines of Home 79
4. Tracing: The Lifelines of Identification 107
Seeing: The Lifelines of Surgery 135
5. Breathing: The Lifelines of Ventilation 147
6. Dissecting: The Lifelines of Forensics 174
7. Recovering: The Lifelines of Discharge 200
Epilogue: The Traffic of Medicine 229
Notes 237
References 253
Index 277
About the author
Harris Solomon
