Physician author Siddhartha Mukherjee writes in the New York Times about coming across an unusual case study recorded by the late Oliver Sacks. Sacks describes the case of a woman who had a “lifelong history of seeing people’s faces change into dragonlike faces.” Though not a neurologist, like Sacks, Mukherjee is fascinated by the case. A thorough evaluation, including neurological examination, M.R.I. scan and experimental treatments revealed no answer or resolution.

Mukherjee is puzzled by the inclusion in a prominent medical journal. He ponders: “There was no revelatory flourish of diagnostic wizardry….. It was as if Sacks lobbed the puzzle into the future for someone else to solve: In some distant time, he seemed to imply, another neurologist would read this story and find resonances with another case involving another patient and complete the circle of explanation.”

Mukherjee notes that Hippocrates, the father of medicine, himself outlined case histories that remained a mystery without a clear diagnosis. Mukherjee recognizes that medicine has changed: “But over the years, as the discipline of medicine moved concertedly from descriptive to mechanistic, from observational to explanatory and from anecdotal to statistical, the case study fell out of favor. As doctors, we began to prioritize modes of learning that depended on experiments and objectivity.”

Mukherjee seems almost melancholy about the demise of the case study and what this omission means to medicine: “I miss the acuity of the observations, the scatter plots of symptoms that cannot be put into neat boxes, the vividness of description…. I worry that unknown unknowns will go unwritten — that buried within such cases, there might have been a cosmos of inexplicable observations that might, in turn, have inspired new ways of thinking about human pathology.” What role might narrative medicine play in honing the observational and descriptive skills of medical professionals that Mukherjee notes is lacking in today’s medical world?

Writing prompt: Do you agree with Mukherjee that something is lost in devaluing the case study? If so, what is lost? Think of a patient or family member whose illness was unique and perhaps undiagnosed. Write their case study, a detailed accounting of their history of illness. Write for 10 minutes.