After a life crisis[clarification needed], he became a stretcher-bearer in a hospital and discovered an interest in medicine, finding "... its controlled and altruistic violence deeply appealing.

Marsh's three-month-old son William was admitted to the local hospital, where he had a tumour removed five days later, which was diagnosed as a choroid plexus papilloma.

Marsh experienced the anguish that parents endure when their children are patients: "Anxious and angry relatives are a burden all doctors must bear, but having been one myself was an important part of my medical education.

[5] The work has also received praise from The Observer and The Daily Telegraph, the latter of which printed Nicholas Blincoe calling it "an elegant series of meditations at the closing of a long career".

[6][7] Michiko Kakutani was also favorable, writing that while the book "may unsettle readers" it would "at the same time leave them with a searing appreciation of the wonders of the human body, and gratitude that there are surgeons like Henry Marsh using their hard-won expertise to save and repair lives.