The Medical Research Novel in English and German, 1900-1950 (review)

268 BOOK REVIEWS and does create many meanings in the sad and challenging event that is the aids epidemic. There is a vast difference between believing that a disease intrinsically carries a specific meaning and in believing that one can as an individual use the occasion of a disease to create personal meaning, meaning that need not also have political content. Paula A. Treichler's essay, which insightfully and wittily assesses aids dramas on television, and James Miller's essay on the understanding of transformation in personal poetry, novels, and short stories dealing with aids demonstrate the richness of such an approach. Some meanings will be more important to those in the gay culture; some meanings more important to those in health-care cultures; some to those in Hispanic and African-American cultures; and some to those in religious or other cultures . Insisting on (or expecting that there will be or should be) only one meaning may serve some political end, but it will do little to serve human ones. Writing AIDS sometimes seems to obscure more than it reveals, but it cannot help but force readers to think harder about the slippery problems of disease and meaning, and death and meaning. Thus, the book may also reach that second goal of the series: "to provide ... a wider comprehension of culture in general." —Judith Wilson Ross St. Joseph Health System Orange, California Phillip A. Scott, The Medical Research Novel in English and German, 19001950 . Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1992. 140 pp. Clothbound, $24.95; paperback, $13.95. The doctor novel, a work of fiction in which a physician is the main character, is by now an established genre in Western literature. As Phillip A. Scott notes in his book, almost four hundred novels about doctors were published in the United States alone between 1870 and 1955. Following the trend toward ever narrower specialization in all fields of human knowledge and endeavor, he focuses in this book on a subtype of the doctor novel in which the protagonist is engaged in medical research. His book is meant to be, in his own words, both "a specialized character study" (p. 2) and "a study in comparative literature" (p. 3), a task he has undertaken by reviewing various attitudes of the protagonists Book Reviews 269 in eighteen novels. His discussion focuses, however, on three American and four German novels. They include Arrowsmith, by Sinclair Lewis (1925); Medical Meeting, by Mildred Walker (1949); The Fire and the Wood, by R. C. Hutchinson (1940); and, as their German counterparts, Angela Koldewey, by Betina Ewerbeck (1939); Viele sind Berufen (Many Are Called), by Hermann Hoster (1933); Die Spur (The Trail), by W. B. Erlin (1947); and Georg Letham, Arzt und Mörder (Georg Letham, Physician and Murderer ), by Ernst Weiss (1931). In addition, he mentions and occasionally quotes from four other American and seven other German novels pubUshed between 1924 and 1949. Scott approaches the study of his protagonists' characters by analyzing their attitudes toward life, success, and social and cultural issues; their self-images and mental and physical health; their relationships with others; their religious convictions; and, more specifically related to his subject, their attitudes toward medicine and science. After reading the first two or three of the book's six chapters, one begins to suspect, not surprisingly, what the author confirms briefly in the concluding chapter: that the life of a person committed to medical research is not significantly different from the life of others who single-mindedly pursue what they perceive as a calling, no matter what their profession or vocation. With rare exceptions, they consider themselves to be selflessly in the service of humanity, even though they are not immune to the lures of money, prestige, and fame. What is specific to medical researchers is their exposure to mental and physical hazards, but their vulnerabiUty, at least in the novels discussed here, is caused chiefly by the problems common among idealistic, hard-working, self-sacrificing people. They don't take the time they need for good rest, exercise, and recreation, and they don't pay much attention to whether what they eat and drink is good for...