
The Miracles Doctors in Italian Village, Plymouth Have Witnessed
Sibling grief—the loss of a brother or sister—is often overlooked in a culture that focuses its grief support on spouses and parents. In Italian Village, Plymouth, New Hampshire, Physicians' Untold Stories speaks to siblings who have lost their lifelong companions. The physician accounts in Dr. Kolbaba's collection, which describe dying patients connecting with deceased siblings and other family members, offer bereaved siblings the same comfort they offer all who grieve: the possibility that the bond between siblings may persist beyond death, that the person who shared your childhood is not entirely gone.

About the Author
Dr. Scott J. Kolbaba, MD is an internist at Northwestern Medicine in Wheaton, Illinois. He interviewed more than 200 physicians about their most extraordinary experiences.

Physicians' Untold Stories
by Scott J. Kolbaba, MD • 4.5 stars (1018 reviews)
Miraculous experiences doctors are hesitant to share with their patients, or ANYONE!
Order on Amazon →"I just read your book and was inspired, moved, entertained. I can't wait to share this book with premeds." — D.G., Ophthalmology Professor, University of Illinois
Medical Fact
The stethoscope was invented in 1816 by René Laennec because he felt it was inappropriate to place his ear directly on a young woman's chest.
Physician Burnout & Wellness Near Italian Village, Plymouth
Physicians practicing in Italian Village, Plymouth, New Hampshire work at the intersection of modern medicine and experiences that resist explanation. In conversations that rarely leave the break room or the on-call suite, doctors in and around Italian Village, Plymouth have reported encounters with phenomena that their training never prepared them for — from patients who describe verifiable details about events that occurred while they were clinically dead, to deathbed visions shared simultaneously by multiple family members, to recoveries that defy every prognostic model available.
The medical community in Italian Village, Plymouth includes physicians across every stage of their careers — residents navigating the exhaustion of training, mid-career practitioners balancing clinical demands with family life, and veteran physicians carrying decades of experiences that challenge the boundaries of conventional medicine. Burnout touches all of them differently, but a common thread runs through: the desire to remember why they chose medicine in the first place, and the rare but profound moments that remind them.
Physician Burnout by Specialty
Percentage reporting at least one symptom (Medscape, 2024)
Medical Fact
Your body contains enough iron to make a 3-inch nail, enough sulfur to kill all the fleas on an average dog, and enough carbon to make 900 pencils.
Faith, Medicine & the Unexplained in Italian Village, Plymouth, New Hampshire
Historic meetinghouse architecture—spare, light-filled, oriented toward a central purpose—has influenced hospital chapel design near Italian Village, Plymouth, New Hampshire. These spaces strip away denominational symbols in favor of natural light, simple seating, and silence. The result is a room that belongs to no faith and all faiths, where a Baptist can pray, a Buddhist can meditate, and an atheist can simply breathe.
Catholic bioethics centers near Italian Village, Plymouth, New Hampshire grapple with questions that secular ethics committees often avoid: the moral status of embryos, the permissibility of genetic engineering, the ethics of extending life beyond natural limits. Whatever one's position on these issues, the rigor of Catholic moral reasoning—honed over two millennia—enriches the ethical conversation in ways that benefit patients of all faiths and none.
Medical Fact
The human body is bioluminescent — it emits visible light, but 1,000 times weaker than what our eyes can detect.
Ghost Stories and the Supernatural Near Italian Village, Plymouth, New Hampshire
The Underground Railroad's hidden passages beneath Northeast cities have left their mark on hospitals built above them near Italian Village, Plymouth, New Hampshire. Maintenance workers have discovered sealed rooms, forgotten tunnels, and—on more than one occasion—the sound of shuffling feet and whispered prayers in languages that no living person in the building speaks. The freedom seekers may have moved on, but their desperate hope lingers.
Harvard Medical School's anatomy theater, built in 1847, established a tradition of learning from the dead that extends to every teaching hospital near Italian Village, Plymouth, New Hampshire. But the dead, some say, are not passive participants. Anatomy professors across New England share stories of cadavers whose expressions change overnight, whose hands seem to have moved, and whose presence lingers in the lab long after the body is gone.
Did You Know?
The human heart begins beating approximately 22 days after conception — before the brain has fully formed.
Near-Death Experiences Reported by Physicians Near Italian Village, Plymouth
Northeast pediatric hospitals near Italian Village, Plymouth, New Hampshire face a unique challenge when children report NDEs. Unlike adults, children lack the cultural and religious frameworks that skeptics cite as the source of NDE narratives. When a four-year-old describes leaving her body during surgery and accurately reports a conversation that occurred in the hallway, the neurochemical-artifact explanation strains credibility.
The Northeast's bioethics committees, among the most sophisticated in the country, are beginning to grapple with NDE-related questions near Italian Village, Plymouth, New Hampshire. If a patient reports receiving information during an NDE that proves medically relevant—a previously unknown allergy, a family history detail, a warning about a specific organ—how should the care team respond? The ethical framework for acting on non-empirical information doesn't exist yet.
Near-Death Experience Features
Percentage reporting each feature (van Lommel et al., 2001)
Did You Know?
Dr. Kolbaba found that physicians who had experienced the death of a close family member were more open to discussing unexplained phenomena.
Watch Dr. Kolbaba Share These Stories
Did You Know?
Hippocrates described over 60 diseases in his writings — many of his clinical observations remain accurate today.
Medical Heritage in New Hampshire
New Hampshire's medical history stretches back to the founding of Dartmouth Medical School in 1797, making it the fourth-oldest medical school in the United States. Located in Hanover, it was established by Dr. Nathan Smith, who envisioned training physicians for rural New England. Smith himself performed one of the first ovarian tumor removals in American history in 1821. Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, the state's only academic medical center, grew from these roots and today serves as the tertiary referral hospital for much of northern New England. Dr. Albert Surgeon General Gallatin, a New Hampshire native, contributed to early public health measures in the state.
The New Hampshire State Hospital in Concord, opened in 1842, was one of the earliest state psychiatric institutions in New England and became known for its progressive approach to mental health care under superintendent Dr. Jesse Bancroft. Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital, founded in 1893 through a bequest from Hiram Hitchcock in memory of his wife, became the teaching hospital for Dartmouth Medical School. The state's rural character has driven innovations in community health; the Ammonoosuc Community Health Services, founded in 1975 in the White Mountains, became a model for federally qualified health centers serving isolated mountain communities.
About the Book
The idea for the book began when a single colleague shared an experience he had never told anyone.
Supernatural Folklore and Ghost Traditions in New Hampshire
New Hampshire's supernatural legends are woven into its colonial history and rugged mountain landscape. The tale of "Ocean Born Mary" is one of the state's most enduring ghost stories: Mary Wallace, born aboard a ship off the coast of New England in 1720, allegedly grew up to live in a grand house in Henniker, New Hampshire, built for her by a reformed pirate named Don Pedro. Her ghost is said to haunt the house, appearing as a tall red-haired woman in colonial dress, and the legend has drawn curiosity seekers to Henniker for generations.
Mount Washington, the highest peak in the Northeast at 6,288 feet, has a long history of fatal weather events and ghostly encounters. Hikers have reported seeing the apparition of Lizzie Bourne, a young woman who died of exposure near the summit in 1855—she was one of the first recorded hiking fatalities on the mountain. The Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, site of the 1944 international monetary conference, is famously haunted by the ghost of its builder, Joseph Stickney, whose wife Caroline remarried a French prince after his death. Staff report seeing Stickney's ghost in the dining room and hearing piano music from empty ballrooms.
About the Book
Dr. Kolbaba was inspired to write the book after years of hearing extraordinary stories from colleagues who felt they had no one to tell.
Haunted Hospitals and Medical Landmarks in New Hampshire
Laconia State School (Laconia): The Laconia State School, which operated from 1903 to 1991 as an institution for people with intellectual disabilities, was the subject of abuse investigations and documented mistreatment. The abandoned campus has become a site for paranormal investigations, with visitors reporting shadowy figures, children's laughter in empty buildings, and an overwhelming sense of sadness in the dormitory halls.
New Hampshire State Hospital (Concord): Operating since 1842, the New Hampshire State Hospital has a troubled history that includes overcrowding and patient deaths. The older buildings on campus are said to be haunted by former patients, with staff reporting unexplained screaming from empty rooms, doors that lock and unlock themselves, and the figure of a woman in a white hospital gown seen staring from upper-story windows at night.
Types of Phenomena in the Book
Distribution across 26 physician accounts
Research Finding
Medical students who participate in narrative medicine courses show higher empathy scores than those who do not.
How This Book Can Help You
Physicians' Untold Stories by Dr. Scott Kolbaba speaks to the kind of intimate medicine still practiced in New Hampshire's rural communities, where Dartmouth-trained physicians serve patients across generations in small towns from the White Mountains to the Connecticut River valley. The state's medical tradition, rooted in Nathan Smith's vision of training doctors for underserved areas, produces the kind of deep clinical relationships where physicians witness the full arc of life and death—the same setting in which Dr. Kolbaba, working at Northwestern Medicine after his Mayo Clinic training, encountered the unexplained deathbed phenomena he documents in his book.
For physicians near Italian Village, Plymouth, New Hampshire approaching retirement, this book raises a question that career-end reflection naturally invites: what was the most meaningful moment of your medical practice? For many of the doctors in these pages, it wasn't the successful surgery or the brilliant diagnosis—it was the moment when something beyond medicine entered the room, and they were present enough to notice.

Research Finding
Intermittent fasting (16:8 pattern) has been shown to improve insulin sensitivity and reduce inflammatory markers.
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Discover the Stories Medicine Never Says Out Loud
Physicians' Untold Stories by Scott J. Kolbaba, MD — 4.5 stars from 1018 readers.
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