Sherwin B. Nuland

Sherwin B. Nuland – Life, Career, and Famous Quotes


Explore the life, scientific and literary contributions, and enduring wisdom of Sherwin B. Nuland. This biography delves into his work as a surgeon, medical ethicist, and writer, and highlights his reflections on death, aging, and meaning.

Introduction: Who Was Sherwin B. Nuland?

Sherwin Bernard Nuland (born Shepsel Ber Nudelman; December 8, 1930 – March 3, 2014) was an American surgeon, educator, bioethicist, medical historian, and author.

His 1994 book How We Die: Reflections on Life’s Final Chapter became a best-seller, earned the National Book Award, and established him as a leading public voice on how we confront death.

In what follows, we explore his early life, medical career, writings, philosophy, and a selection of his most memorable quotations.

Early Life and Family

Sherwin B. Nuland was born in the Bronx, New York City, on December 8, 1930.

His childhood was shaped by early encounters with illness, death, and the immigrant struggle, experiences he later said sharpened his sense of mortality and purpose.

After high school, he attended New York University (graduating as valedictorian, class of 1951) and subsequently enrolled in Yale School of Medicine.

Youth, Education & Medical Training

At Yale, Nuland pursued his medical degree and surgical training, eventually establishing himself as a surgeon.

Alongside his clinical practice, he developed deep interests in medical history, ethics, and the meaning of suffering and death.

During his surgical career, he published articles in medical and academic journals, and gradually he began writing for general audiences, bridging the divide between medical science and public understanding.

Career and Achievements

Surgical Practice & Academic Service

Sherwin Nuland practiced surgery for about 30 years, during which he is said to have treated more than 10,000 patients.

His involvement in hospital ethics committees and policy debates put him at the forefront of evolving medical standards in end-of-life care, physician-patient decision-making, and the humane treatment of the dying.

Author & Public Thinker

After retiring from active surgery (around 1992), Nuland turned more fully to writing and lecturing. His goal was to bring medical knowledge and ethical reflection into public discourse.

Some of his key books include:

  • Doctors: The Biography of Medicine (1988) — a narrative history of Western medicine through personalities and breakthroughs.

  • How We Die: Reflections on Life’s Final Chapter (1993 / 1994) — examining the biology, ethics, and humanity of dying.

  • The Wisdom of the Body (1997) — exploring the body’s systems, vulnerabilities, and resilience.

  • The Mysteries Within — on how myth, religion, and science intersect in our understanding of the body.

  • The Soul of Medicine: Tales from the Bedside (2009) — a collection of evocative clinical stories from his and others’ medical experience.

  • The Art of Aging: A Doctor’s Prescription for Well-Being (2007) — reflections on growing older well.

  • The Uncertain Art: Thoughts on a Life in Medicine (2008) — meditations on the humility, uncertainty, and moral weight of medical practice.

How We Die was translated into dozens of languages, sold widely, and won the 1994 National Book Award for Nonfiction, while also being shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize.

Nuland also wrote essays and opinion pieces for major publications such as The New Yorker, The New Republic, Time, The New York Times, Discover, and others.

He delivered a notable TED talk (in 2001) in which he spoke openly about his struggles with depression, the suggestion of a lobotomy, and being treated with electroshock therapy — a powerful moment of vulnerability from a medical professional.

In recognition of his service to medical culture, Nuland was awarded the Jonathan Rhoads Gold Medal of the American Philosophical Society in 2011.

Historical Milestones & Context

  • 1930 – Born in New York City (Bronx).

  • 1951 – Graduated NYU as valedictorian.

  • 1950s–1990s – Surgical training and decades of clinical practice, teaching, and ethics work.

  • 1986 – Founding member of the Yale–New Haven Hospital Bioethics Committee.

  • 1988 – Publication of Doctors: The Biography of Medicine.

  • 1993/1994 – Publication and acclaim of How We Die: Reflections on Life’s Final Chapter.

  • 1992 (approx.) – Retirement from full surgical practice to focus more on writing.

  • 2001 – Delivers TED talk describing personal struggles with depression and medical treatments.

  • 2007 – Publishes The Art of Aging.

  • 2009 – Publishes The Soul of Medicine.

  • 2011 – Receives Jonathan Rhoads Gold Medal.

  • 2014 – Dies at home in Hamden, Connecticut, on March 3, from prostate cancer.

Legacy and Influence

Sherwin B. Nuland’s influence extends across medicine, ethics, literature, and public conversations about death and healing. Some key aspects of his legacy:

  1. Demystifying Death
    Through How We Die and his essays, Nuland compelled readers to confront mortality not as a taboo, but as a deeply human and inevitable process. He encouraged openness, nuance, and dignity in end-of-life discussions.

  2. Bridging Science and Humanity
    His writing fused medical insight with ethical, philosophical, and literary reflection, showing that medicine is not just a technical craft but also a human art.

  3. Ethics and Patient Autonomy
    Nuland’s work in bioethics emphasized respecting patients’ rights, acknowledging uncertainty, and resisting paternalism in medicine. He helped shape evolving norms about how doctors and patients share decisions.

  4. Educator and Storyteller
    His books and lectures made complex topics accessible. He used narrative, history, and anecdotes to teach not only what medicine can do, but what it should mean.

  5. Honesty & Vulnerability
    His willingness to speak about his own psychological and physical struggles (e.g. depression, therapy, mortality) lent credibility and compassion to his voice. His TED talk remains a powerful example of vulnerability from a medical authority.

His daughter, Victoria Nuland, became a notable U.S. diplomat (serving as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs).

Personality and Talents

Sherwin Nuland combined sharp intellect, disciplined medical skill, and deep humanity. He valued precision and rigor in the operating theater, but he also knew when humility was paramount. Death and suffering were not abstractions to him; they had faces, stories, and moral weight.

He often remarked on the limits of medicine — that sometimes the true service lies in relieving suffering, choosing when to act and when to let go. He saw healing not purely as cure, but often as accompaniment and wisdom.

His voice as a writer was reflective, sometimes poetic yet never distant — always grounded in the concrete reality of the body, the hospital ward, the act of witnessing. He believed in confronting unpleasant truths, especially about aging, decline, and mortality, rather than sanitizing or denying them.

While trained in rigorous science, he maintained openness to spiritual values, acknowledging that the life sciences contain dimensions that lie beyond strictly materialistic explanation.

Famous Quotes of Sherwin B. Nuland

Here are several notable quotations that reflect Nuland’s meditations on death, dignity, medicine, and life:

“To become comfortable with uncertainty is one of the primary goals in the training of a physician.” “I have not often seen much dignity in the process by which we die.” “The final disease that nature inflicts on us will determine the atmosphere in which we take our leave of life, but our own choices should be allowed, insofar as possible, to be the decisive factor in the manner of our going.” “Death is the surcease that comes when the exhausting battle has been lost.” “The dignity we seek in dying is not to be found in our final weeks, days or moments but in the way we live and how we are seen by those people whose lives we affect.” “The greatest dignity to be found in death is the dignity of the life that preceded it. This is a form of hope that we can all achieve, and it is the most abiding of all. Hope resides in the meaning of what our lives have been.” “The life sciences contain spiritual values which can never be explained by the materialistic attitude of present day science.” “If we cannot heal in one way, we must learn to heal in another.” “Nosology (from the Greek nosos, meaning disease, and logos, referring to study) is not a sport for the timid, and certainly not for those so scrupulous about rules and order that they demand consistency in all things.” “Cancer cells behave like the members of a barbarian horde run amok—leaderless and undirected, but with a single-minded purpose: to plunder everything within reach.” “If the classic image of dying with dignity must be modified or even discarded, what is to be salvaged of our hope for the final memories we leave to those who love us? The dignity we seek in dying must be found in the dignity with which

Articles by the author

By the time of my ninth birthday, I had become a bit of a socialist, as I am said by conservative colleagues to be to this day. I went on within the next few years to volunteer as an envelope stuffer for the American Labor Party, and my political thinking has not shifted measurably since that time.

Sherwin B. Nuland

Too many of the elderly do not have the family or the communal attachments necessary to feel valued; too many are widowed or otherwise alone; too many live in surroundings where they are essentially without the companionship necessary to stimulate a mind in danger of deteriorating.

Sherwin B. Nuland

Where the despair of loneliness and poverty haunts every hour, the optimism to embark on new projects cannot find a place to alight on the brain's cortex. Poverty itself is an enormous obstacle to an enlightened and enlightening - not to say healthy - old age.

Sherwin B. Nuland

Even putting aside the Judeo-Christian morality upon which the Constitution and our nation's culture are based, the notion of forced euthanasia would contradict the long-held body of medical ethics to which all American doctors must adhere.

Sherwin B. Nuland

I never had a conscious fear of death, but I did have a conscious fear of sickness. By the time I completed medical school, that fear was gone.

Sherwin B. Nuland

The growing professional disciplines of medical ethics and bioethics have had a profound impact on researchers, bedside doctors, associations of physicians, and government.

Sherwin B. Nuland

Medical judgment can be taught - laboriously, in long periods of training - but it cannot be neatly handed over as the occasion demands it. It is the irreplaceable and untransferable contribution that the healer makes to the suffering individual who would be healed.

Sherwin B. Nuland

Every hope of successive generations of scholars that order might be constructed from the chaotic mess of medical nomenclature has been frustrated. Even diseases recognized in the same historical period have been given names based on characteristics that have no relation to one another, and thus no common criteria.

Sherwin B. Nuland

Long regarded as central to the contemporary understanding of medical ethics are four principles that must be satisfied in order to fulfill the requirements of moral decision-making. These principles are autonomy, justice, beneficence, and non-maleficence.

Sherwin B. Nuland

The writings and the recommendations of the earliest medical scientists and the new breed of clinicians between the mid-fifteenth and early seventeenth centuries were based on the supposition that sufficient study and experimentation would elucidate not only the origins of disease, but its treatment as well.

Sherwin B. Nuland