Like Father's, Like Parkinson’s

From a family email thread discussing the potential patriarchal prospect of Parkinson's:

On Thu, Aug 6, 2026, 11:31 AM Kristen Lahti wrote:

The author of that article, Lisa Sanders, M.D., will be familiar to both Mother Lahti and Father Lahti (David Lahti the Elder):

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In May 2024, for Mother's Day, I ordered a paperback copy of Dr. Sanders's book, Every Patient Tells a Story: Medical Mysteries and the Art of Diagnosis, a collection from 2009 from her popular monthly "Diagnosis" column in The New York Times Magazine, which had inspired the hit Fox medical drama series House (2004-2012), on which she served as technical advisor.

Here's Atul Gawande, among the signature physician-writers of our time, whose smash best-seller Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End (2014) was among Mother Lahti's books at Christmas 2019:

"Lisa Sanders is a paragon of the modern medical detective storyteller. The tales here crackle with suspense. But what sets her apart is her Holmes-like eye for the clues–and her un-Holmes-like compassion for those who suffer."

—Atul Gawande, author of Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance and Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science

Dr. Sanders carries on the noble Promethean tradition of the pioneering Berton Roueché (1910-1994) of The New Yorker, whose articles on clinical mysteries were collected in such books as Eleven Blue Men, and Other Narratives of Medical Detection (1954) The Medical Detectives (1980) - and The Man Who Grew Two Breasts, and Other True Tales of Medical Detection (1995), that last a gift for Richard Leffew the Younger at Christmas 2019.

Please excuse this latest eruption of bibliomania - for I am on quite the roll this week, with my fourteenth letter in The Times Literary Supplement - the second in six weeks - having in paper form commenced arriving in Greater London mailboxes, newsstands and bookstores c. 3am US Eastern this morning. 📚 📰 

Your ever-avUncular influencer, 
D.S. "Uncle Scott" Lahti (DSL.)

Author, the popular "Uncle Scott" series (recent and forthcoming): 

Uncle Scott's Guide to Air Fryers and Hair Driers

Oh, When the Sinners Come Charming Out

The Collected Award-Winning Wikipedia Articles of Uncle Scott (Both of Them)

Uncle Scott Would Like 200 Words With You: A Man of Letters to the Editor

"Bliss Was It in That Dawn to Be Alive: But to Be Young Uncle Scott Was Very Heaven" (after Wordsworth)

Undercover Cock: How I Helped Fry America's Most Hard-Boiled Criminals Disguised as a Rooster (Bantam paperback; Foreword by Eggs Benedict Cumberbatch)

&c.

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