The Sixth Sense Written By Lawrence W. Gold, M.D.

This terrific book takes the reader into the medical profession, as do Dr. Gold's other two books but this one goes farther introducing the "Sixth Sense" to the readers. Dr. Arnold Roth is a general practitioner at Brier Hospital. The hospital at present was having an epidemic of viral encephalitis and the flu, which kept the hospital full with very few beds available. A doctor's profession throws many obstacles and bad things into their lives, one of which is having to be honest with a dying patient. This excellent story has one of Dr. Roth's patients as one of that kind and he is forced to talk with the family about possibilities. It is rarely good but the family has to know what could lie ahead.
And there are the pharmaceutical companies that work hard to develop new drugs for body ailments that need a cure or great relief. Some of these companies compromise their reputation by giving false hopes in a medicine that does not do what it is advertised to so do. The doctors do not know which companies do this but rather they think all is good and normal in these medicines the companies come up with until several patients show problems they shouldn't. Arnies wife, Lois, is always there for him trying to get him to take time off and not to push himself so hard. Brier Hospital had a QA Committee of which Arnie is a member. This is used for Quality Assurance when there are problems with patients or medications. The story reveals several of Arnies patients and follows them through their hospital or home time. When Arnie becomes sick and has to go to the hospital himself, others are consulted to diagnose and treat him as well as his patients. After his hospitalization, Arnie slowly worked his way back to his work but with a different sense of seeing people and acknowledging their diagnosis like he never could before his illness. He could tell by smell what was wrong even if there was no other indication to substantiate his decision. But he was correct in those diagnoses when no one else could understand.
Arnie continued with his unusual smell ability. In public he could pick out someone that is sick, or happy, or nervous. Food smells turned him on to foods he never ate. In the hospital the doctors couldn't understand how he could diagnose some of the medical problems. Dr. Jack Byrnes was an associate of Arnies and he told Arnie that he needed to make an appointment because he had noticed some of the strange ways Arnie was acting. Before Arnie was placed in the hospital for treatment of this new sense, which was driving him and others nuts, the companies that had been producing medicine that made patients sicker rather than healing, were brought out and were prosecuted. Some couldn't believe the extent that was taken to make money with the fake or understated drugs. While all of this was going on Arnie was in the hospital in a constant gaze at nothing and was unable to communicate with his family and friends. His doctors hoped he would snap out of this state he was in but he was not responding to any medication.
This is a must read as far as I am concerned. The author did a masterful writing job on this, as he did with his other books. You won't go wrong if you read all of them.

Reader review by Cy Hilterman of a book supplied by the author