In medical school I never learned the art of prognostication, the art of prophesying how much time was left in a patient’s life. To be sure, it is difficult to teach the art of prognostication to medical students, who have limited knowledge and experience. In other words, medical students have neither the knowledge nor the experience to engage in accurate prognostication. In his book Death Foretold, Dr. Nicholas Christakis describes the importance of prognostication in medicine. Patients and physicians alike believe that patients should have some general — albeit carefully circumscribed — awareness of death and its impending occurrence.