The Human Remains

A graphic memoir of one doctor’s journey through clinical training and his return to the human side of care.

Under the fluorescent lights of the anatomy lab, a first-year medical student makes his opening incision into a donor’s body and embarks on a profession that will ask more of him than he can imagine. The Human Remains is a graphic memoir about what medical training takes and what it might give back.

In spare, unflinching panels, Dr. Nathan A. Gray traces his path from an anxious student with a scalpel to an exhausted resident to a physician able to sit with his patients’ suffering. Raised in a family of doctors, he entered medicine believing that it was his calling. What he encountered instead was a culture of endurance—sleep deprivation, the depersonalizing churn of patient care, and a steady drift away from the ideals that first drew him in. At each stage of his training, he found himself promising that he would be kinder, more human, different. Not all of those promises were kept.

The turning point for Dr. Gray came in palliative care, a specialty that taught him to weave the science of medicine into each person’s particular story of suffering, meaning, and mortality. There, he rediscovered the possibility of practicing medicine without losing sight of the human being before him. Honest, searching, and at times darkly funny, The Human Remains is a meditation on the fragile work of becoming a doctor who can still feel.

“What an extraordinary book! Nathan Gray’s drawings and narration convey fathoms of feelings. The Human Remains is insightful, vulnerable, and moving. Gray draws us into his life as a medical student. His artistic perspective poignantly illustrates the entwined visceral, moral, and emotional experiences of his medical training. Few physician writers have conveyed the combined angst and exhilaration of medical training as candidly and powerfully as Gray. In palliative care Gray found a salve to soften the calluses that had grown to encase his empathy and vulnerability.”—Ira Byock, MD, palliative care physician and author of Dying Well and The Best Care Possible

“The Human Remains is a powerful and beautifully drawn graphic memoir. Nathan Gray skillfully renders our medical culture with clarity, humor and compassion. A potent reminder that by giving form to our collective experience, we also heal.”—Dr. Rana Awdish, author of In Shock and After Shock

“An unflinching look at a life in medicine, inside out—sometimes disturbing, sometimes cynical, but compassionate and human in greater measure.”—Kay Sohini, author of This Beautiful, Ridiculous City: A Graphic Memoir

“Gray reminds us not only that doctors are human but that patients are, too. Authoritative, insightful, compassionate, and a powerful contribution to graphic medicine.”—Brian Fies, author of Mom’s Cancer

“Nathan Gray tells another story about the complex and confounding journey toward becoming a doctor. But his story comes alive on the pages in a new way, with compelling and beautiful graphic images that can’t be forgotten.”—Jessica Zitter, MD, MPH, FAAHPM, FCCP, Founder Reel Medicine Media

Nathan A. Gray, MD, is a palliative care physician and Associate Professor of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University. He uses comics and other artwork to promote empathy, educate others, and explore the ironies of the medical world. His work has been published in the Washington Post, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, the British Medical Journal, and the American Medical Association Journal of Ethics. Dr. Gray lives in Baltimore with his wife, Bethany; their two kids; and their steadfast standard poodle, Lily.