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For more than fifty years, Dr. Cahill has been helping to heal the world, as a leading specialist in tropical medicine and as a driving force in humanitarian assistance and relief efforts around the globe. In this revised and expanded edition, he chronicles extraordinary achievements of compassion and commitment. Bringing together a rich selection of writings, he crafts a fascinating memoir of a life devoted to others. The book includes front-line reports from places under siege—Lebanon, Somalia, Sudan, Nicaragua, Gaza, and Ireland; there are also visionary essays from the origins of the AIDS epidemic and landmine crises, and no less passionate concerns of his own experiences of pain and suffering—as well as of joy and beauty—in the worlds in which he has traveled. As the distinguished neurologist and author Oliver Sacks, M.D., notes in his endorsement, “These essays, by turns elegiac, lyrical, funny, tender, nostalgic, and vehemently impassioned, come together in an ongoing tapestry, a portrait of a dedicated physician who has dared to make a difference.”
“Dr. Cahill makes a powerful argument that humanitarian action and preventive diplomacy are far better prescriptions for peace than military intervention. He writes not as an academic or think tank pundit but as a physician who has been tending patients on the front lines of misery for over half a century. To Bear Witness is an important contribution to the search for a less violent 21st century.”
“It would be difficult for a biographer to weave together the many strands in the remarkable life of Kevin Cahill…He has practiced as a physician in the most impoverished, strife-torn, disease-ravaged parts of the world, and devoted much of his life (and considerable powers of persuasion) to humanitarian causes all over the globe. These essays, by turn elegiac, lyrical, funny, tender, nostalgic, and vehemently impassioned, come together in an ongoing tapestry, a portrait of a dedicated physician who has dared to make a difference.”
“Humanitarian affairs as a subject of intellectual study, and in the creation of practical policies, has emerged over the last two decades as one of the key issues in international politics. In this evolution Kevin Cahill has made, and continues to make, a very important contribution. A notable humanitarian, he draws from his personal devotion to patients, his worldwide knowledge of medicine, his skills as a health administrator, and his scholarship, writings and love of literature.”
Kevin M. Cahill, M.D., (1936-2022) was University Professor and Director at the Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs at Fordham University and the President of the Center for International Humanitarian Cooperation in New York City. He was also a Professor of Clinical Tropical Medicine and Molecular Parasitology at New York University and Director of the Tropical Disease Center at Lenox Hill Hospital. He served as the Chief Advisor on Humanitarian and Public Health Issues for three Presidents of the United Nations General Assembly and for the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations. His career in tropical medicine and humanitarian operations began in Calcutta in 1959; he carried out medical, relief, and epidemiological research in 70 countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. He wrote or edited 33 books, translated into many languages, and more than 200 articles in peer-reviewed journals on subjects ranging from public health and tropical diseases to humanitarian assistance, foreign affairs, Irish literature, and history. He held numerous Honorary Doctorates from universities around the world.
