Oakland Tribune from Oakland, California • Page 54

Tribune, Supday, Feb. 5, 1950 BETWEEN THE BOOK NDS HEREAFTER in Dantesque Mode Edited by NANCY BARR MAVITY Matron Ca Lif mp i Jt" S' A 4 t' aMaMnaaaiMiiavaaBeltaatfBaieHavUHi THE SHIRLEY LETTERS, edited by Carl I. Wheat; Alfred A. Knopf, N.Y.; $3.50. In 1851 Plumas City on the Feather River was already a ghost town, so quickly did the hopes of prospectors (and-real estate operators) rise and fade; but diggings4bound miners still passed through it on their way to the northern mines.

Marysville was only a year old, but It. already bad Jts newspaper, the Marysville "Herald." Its editor, Steven Massett, received three "letters to the editor" on conditions in Plumas City, and was delighted with the contributions from the pen" of "so fair and talented a She described Plumas as a was-to-have-been city," an almost pre-natal ghost These letters submerged the freshness of their contents under the literary mannerisms of the day; but they became a clue in one of those literary detective stories which enliven the lot of scholars. The nom de plume of "Dame Shirley," it wis much later discovered, showed them to be the earlier work of a writer who, in less Inhibited and ornamental vein, wrote the "Shirley Letters," a picturesque, original and realistic account of mining camp life at Rich Bar. Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clapp, wife of a pioneer doctor, put her observations and often racy comments in the form of letters to her sister "back in the States." They appeared three years later in "The Pioneer: or California Literary Magazine," published in San Francisco. But no one knew how the San Francisco editor got hold of them until the early three letters were discovered a few years ago in the files of the Marysville "Herald" (by this time a rare collectors' item).

Editor Massett was a frequent contributor to and undoubtedly either passed th brought his "fair correspondent" Editor Ewer. He got though ha a gold mine. Letters," as Carl I. Wheat tails us introduction, have long been recognized and cultural historians as cf value. They have twice been limited and out-of-print, editions now But it took the resurgenea of by the Gold Rush Centennial to the reach of the general reader.

wild and barbarous life," Louis Rich Bar in 1851, and promised true picture (as much as in me life and its peculiar temptations things exactly as I see them, hoping will obtain an idea of life in the the bottom ofla gorge far up "the north fork of Feather River, had almost too brief to be remembered. Pacific tracks now follow this gorge. a single blouse remains, virtually a thousand fortune seekers mad center of hopes to be abandoned gold petered out live turbulence, its lusty humor and in these letters from a New England described herself as "a shivering, little thistle," but was of than these words suggest everybody ought to go to the mines," "just to see how little it takes to comfortable in the world." N.B.M. Oakland Reviewed by NANCY BARR MAVITT THE VINTAGE, by Anthony. West; Houghton Mifflin Boston; $3.

The geneticists may well puzzle oyer the odd fact that while it is easy to name musical families of more than one generation (Strauss, Mendelssohn, Bach) the. offspring of iamous writers have not tended to distinguish themselves in The son of Robert and Elizabeth Browning must have had his youth pretty well blighted by the expectatjpn that he -would to be a genlut, but nothing came of it he Just wasn't But Anthony. West is not crushed by an almost overwhelming literary heritage. His father, O. Wells, was a man of far-flung Ideas at well as enormous output.

Readers now mlddle-agd will well remember how in their youth they pounced upon each new novel with breathless expectancy and argued its syllogisms far into the night His mother, Rebecca West, with a mind at once more searching, subtle and keen than that of Wells, is by many considered 'the greatest living stylist of the English language. Such a parental background might well have intimidated any young writer or have influenced him to Imitative mirror-writing. All it did to West (if that 1s what did it) is to make his first novel read like the work of an experienced expert in the craft, but a work which neither of his parents could conceivably have written. NOVEL OF IDEAS The Vintage," like the novels pt H. G.

Wells' later period (when he had left behind both aclence-fantasy and satiric realism) la a novel of ideas. But the ideas have more the deep-probing quality, though not the content, of Rebecca West's than the somewhat sprawling 'sociological excursions of Well. Young West himself, In answer te a question on literary Influences, says that his father Influenced him enormously but certainly not to Wells humanistic 2-G TR TO Anthony West in first noveL shows rich literary heritage from two famous parents Rebecca West and H. G. Wells.

Young Writer Finds Homicide Hides in Trade asked how he got out of hell, he answered: "Why, this is nor am I out of Jt." Wallis reflects: "I am more securely a prisoner in the web of my own dreams and fears and recollections than in any contrivance Rahsome" a most likeable and insidious devil "could create to hold me. I have been the architect and builder of my own hell how am I to take it apart again? What use is it to remember that I have been man?" But West has some original contribution- of his own on the subject Wallis is linked in his pilgrimage with the German general he was instrumental in condemning to death. They first find themselves herded into a train leading to something very like a Nazi concentration camp. Says Kenelm: "Hell is alwayf contemporary this experience proves it to me. medieval hell was constructed In contemporary terms, the terrors were the torturers' repertory.

But it was always intimate: torturer working on lost soul, the fiend's personality imposing on the personality of the damned. CONTEMPORARY HELL "Here we are in a contemporary hell: first terror, not to be treated as a person at all second terror, deprived of all personality we are "driven like cattle in fulfillment of some utterly impersonal plan or design. I have arranged such things myself. How natural to find that I have been an architect of the hell of my time." Such passages of direct com ment, however, are brief and dis pcrsed. The vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored is trampled out in terms char acter, action and suspense method which, for all its bareness and obviousness of allegory, still makes "Pilgrim's Progress" a readable story.

West's pilgrim, more subtle and complex as befits our more confused and confusing time, has the same robust actuality as Bunyan's, and It is a callous reader who will not follow his progress with undiminished excitement to the end. Legend cent and kind. They are a company the like of which would be difficult to find in the present world. She has. a warm and poetic feeling for the countryside of which she writes.

Throughout she infuses her book with a fairy-tale charm which strangely persists despite her occasional lapses into dime-store prose. "Gentian Hill" is the January selection of the Literary Guild. It promises to rival in popularity the author's two earlier Guild selections, "Green Dolphin Street" and "Pilgrim's Here are hours of warming enjoyment for all who have even a tiny chink in their armor of sophistication. 1 Pap ers them fun to do, and I hope to keep right on doing them. I do wiahI could find something else as swap pable as the 'radio N.

B. M. 1 IDYLLIC MIXTURE' grand-nephew of Kathleen Norris, practically cut his teeth on a typewriter. But he is not one to follow in other people's footsteps. He chose his own writing road, the mystery novel a happy choice, as his first ventuie, "A Private Killing," published just a year ago, proved.

AT THE COFFEE HOUR On that occasion, Benet came to our place, by request, to talk it over. By accident his arrival coincided with the hour of an old English custom known as "elev-eniies" (you know, "a little something at 11 This critic was ill disposed to let coffee lol for the sake of any author, evn one of the distinguished Benet family, whose hdme and writing address is the San Francisco house of Kathleen Norris. So we bent an elbow to the "Private Killing," and publication of "The Knife Behind You" last Thursday was made occasion for a dual celebration of anniversary and welcome. It was even more than that, as grounds for congratulation. For Benet told us that "A Private Killing" has been chosen for re-publication by Bantam Books, and its successor is the selection of the Unicorn Book Club for May.

A book a year is good going for any but the mass-production boys, and even more of an accomplishment when complicated by three lively youngsters and a full time job on a morning newspaper. DOES IT BY SYSTEM "System' does it," says Benet. "Even the youngsters turned out to If you have any ambition to track crime to a new lair and lay snarky plans for doing away with a surplus member of the human race, go read the trade Journals and house organs of department store management. They are a perfect seed-bed for the tender sprouts of homicide. Take it from that violent (on paper) young man, James Benet, who buried his nose in this highly-specialized type of literature to such good effect that he is by now an equal authority on the problems of retailing and of murder.

The new Benet mystery, "The Knife Behind You." is. concerned v.ith death in a San Francisco department store. In addition to prowling all the stores in the Bay area and hoping that this sustained interest would not rouse suspicion in themind of the store detectives Benet manifested a sudden and surprising interest in the occupational details of his brother-in-law's life, in the sales division of a department store. CRIMINAL ELEMENT Of course is always flattering; to have some one extend an open ear to your "shop talk" but, as the brother-in-law is still in the department store business, Benet rather hopes that his present employers will not draw any false conclusions and put a watch on him. The criminal element is strictly confined to the literary branch of the family, he insists.

James Benet, as the-son of William Rose Benet. nephew of -the late Stephen Vincent Benet, "and f'iv ft 5. V'i I ovSv 'i U', 4 '''''ffi '4S'fe i 'fx 'fcfc and philosophically rather amor-affected by the aura, which phous views and roost fortunately not to his undigested lumps of straight exposition of sociology and economics which do not so much float upon as threaten to sink his novels as creative fiction. More surprisingly, West is un-amounts Almost to a sort of hypnotic compulsion, exercised by Rebecca West's great and marvelous style on virtually anyone who attempts to write anything while still under the spell of reading Style he has, of force; vigor and, imaginative brilliance, but it is his own, not a reflection of another's incandescence. The story ofThe Vintage" takes off, startlingly enough, with the suicide of the chief character an American attorney at the Nuremberg trials who can no longer endure the sight of the sordid shambles civilization has made of Its world.

The main narrative is concerned primarily with what hap-' pened to him afterwards, although this Involves retrospective flashbacks to the critical way stations on the road of his life that led to Its final derailment. COMMON ALLERGY The reader who (like this one) is constitutionally allergic to all imaginary travelogues of heaven andor hell with any lesser guide than a Milton or a Dante. will miss a stirring and absorbing experience if he lets himself be warned' away by this subject' matter. West does not foist on us the bare bones of allegory in. place of a full-fleshed novel, nor does he forego the firm structure of character and circumstance for wispy and misty symbolism.

lie Jias tackled a very difficult kind of novel, the novel of abstract Ideas, and by the fertility and con-creteness of his imagination gives it a quality of adventure, suspense and psychological reality so much so that we are quite as interested in what happens to Wallis in hell (mislabeled heaven) as in what brought him there. Nobody on this terrain can escape Milton. When Lucifer was HilP Is Like Reviewed by ARTHUR HAKEL a wonderful pair, made of the finest stuff and endowedby their creator with beauty, vision, sensitivity and courage. Moving in and out of their lives Is a veritable procession of admirable persons. There are Father and Mother Sprigg whomStella loved as her real parents; the imperious but wise old Pr.

Crane; the Abbe whom the sea robbed of a wife and, supposedly, of a daughter; Old Sol, rhythmic man of the soil; Granny Bogan, Whose left her with only the good fairies; Hodge, the noble and discerning dog, and many others. Goudge has peopled her novel with human beingr (and animals) who are refreshingly de if it," euaa. lorumea wmcn bad overwhelmed Hungary and lfl.nn. 4Ya or1i4tAftf Anil i' if- i si rl J'i I rk' ft U4'J 'v I -V 1 7At I 4 tr.lrum iniilrj.y.--';iiinKniiiJiJ is ltf Pens Gold dunit," he declares. "But it has at it not fallen into the rigidity any new formula.

Each author and even eh book is free to 4yMP its own structure. That "makes James Benet quaffs office second novel, "The Knife Samplings From Of Early Spring THE FOUR CHAMBERED HEART, by Anais Inn; Duell, Sloan and Pearce, N.Y.; $2.75. Surrealist prose which teeters perilously close to. the same breed of verse, turned on the triangular problems of a dancer named Djuna, a lover named Rango and a wife named Zora; these improbably captioned persons all live in a houseboat on the Seine and explore the sub-basements of consciousness with tantalizing preciosity; BEHOLD THY DAUGHTER, by Neil Paterson; Random House, w. Hags to ricnes zor a femme fatale who began as a poor fisherman's daughter in 19th cen tury Scotland, worked her way, by means not purely cerebral, to fame and fortune, and, capper her career with the greatest adventure of all THE TORMENTORS, by Hichard Cargoe; William Sloane Associates, N.Y.; $3.

In thef cross-fire drives guilt, responsibility and the true meaning of freedom, the authorities in charge of a political concentration camp become the victims and the prisoners their psy- chological tormentors WEEP FOR MY BROTHER, by Clifford Dowdey; Doubleday and N.Y.; $3. The dual tragedy of-a ihan who had to be "his brother's keeper! and of the soul distortion which made the brothei incapable of independent, responsible adjustment to life. THE WHITE KING, by Samuel B. Harrison; Doubleday and Co, N.Y.; $3. Fiction-style biography of Dr.

Gerrit Judd, an'early medical missionary to Hawaii whose in-terests were more medical than theological and who took a wife for the severely -practical reason that bachelors were not acceptable in 1827. ENDURING LOVE, by Ida Schaaf Regelman; Exposition Press, N.Y.J $3. A European woman transplanted to America with snobbery intact learns democratic values in united wartime effort- MY ANCESTOR, by Nancy Wilson Ross; Random House, N.Y.; 4 A 4 t' "i 1 IS I I "The Pioneer," letters along er the attention of did not know it The "Shirley in his excellent by literary almost incomparable published in rareties themselves). Jaterest developed bring them within "I like this Amelia wrote of "to give you a lies) of mining to describe that thusi you mines as it is." Rich Bar, at east branch of the its brief- day, The Western On a small siding Unnoticed. But in Its day if the temporary when the river today in rall its primitive justice, girl who frail, home-loving stauncher Spirits- "Really, writes Shirley, make people a Gentian GENTIAN HILL, by Elizabeth Goudge; Coward-McCann, N.Y.; $3.50.

Take idyllic surroundings, add young love, season with fairies and legend, and stir with the adventurous sea, and you have the makings of some fine reading. Elizabeth Goudge has taken this recipe, collected her cherished ingredients, and blended them all into an interesting, pleasant and, at times, heart-tugging tala of life on the English countryside in the time of the immortal Nelson and Trafalgar, "Gentian Hill" Is the story ef Zachary and Stella, two orphan children brought together by fate to relive in striking parallel a legendary English romance. They are '1 7 4 ABOUT PEOPLE: Human Activities in Books be "useful. When I was writing 'A Private Killing we had a device called a 'radio nurse a gadget "whereby we could hear the baby crying by remote control. Well, the baby-that's Peter, thd he's three now outgrew the need of this gimmick.

"But a friend of ours who was a new mother is also an experienced typist, so we swapped the radio nurse for the typing of the manuscript. It was a good deal, but it couldn't be worked twice. For the second book I had to do my own typing." The eldest of the young generation of Benets, Judy, is headed for a career of press agentry, her father thinks. At eight, she is his most inveterate-and enthusiastic plugger. In her class at school, the pupils ar told -to Bring in news items for classroom reports.

Judy seizes on every printed mention of her father writing, and triumphantly publicizes it to her schoolmates. CHILDREN ARE FRIENDS "All the kids in the neighborhood stopped me on the 'street to say, 'Gee, I hear you have a new book coming out' Benet reports. "But so far as I know, Judy has not succeeded in spreading the good word to thf parents, who might buy one," he adds ruefully. The system is a matter of necessity. "I try to get up at 9," Benet recounts and if that sounds like a lazy man's hours, wait till you hear the rest of it.

"I get to my typewriter at 10. That gives me two hours to write, before I am due at the newspaper office where I work till, around midnight Sunday belongs to the children with night work, I don't have much chance to see them during the 'week, except at lunch time. Monday is my day off, and that goes for chores and errands and work around the place. HELPFUL SCHEDULE "It is a rigid schedule, but I find that that is really helpful. There is no waiting around vaguely for inspiration often an excuse for not getting at the- job in hand with hours a day allocated to writing." As a schedule, it has paid off, for by the time one book is through the press, Benet has another one almost ready.

Next time, he says, the setting is Mdnterey, and the title at present (though subject to change, like the railroad time tables) is "A Little Excite-men." It will be another mystery novel a type, Benet believes, which has far from exhausted, its possibilities, of exploration and originality. "The mystery novel has long since broken through the. old formula of the traditional "who the week are not confined to the law practice of. Erie Stanley Gardner's Terry Mason. Nobody is.

more surprised than Tinker when he is set upon by thugs. When he dismisses Bill Olmstead's charges of being framed as the complaints of a litiginous "querulant," he finds himself convinced (with some violence) that he had better start believing the Improbable, but quick, if he is to emerge with a whole skin. The high panjandrums of the department store hierarchy offered Tinker quite a sum and -good connections for his future practice to jointheir staff of attorneys- in an advisory capacity. It looked Hke all pav and no job for Tinker. Instead, he accepted Bill.

Olmstead as client Bill, that ruculent truck driver and union organizer. -IT HAPPENED IN S.F. What be gets plenty of troubie, the shattering of a lot of illusions, the evidence that iracov ers the culprit the loss of his girl, and the winning of some knowledge of humanity that is likely to prove useful in any lawyer's future practice. It all happens In San Francisco, but there has been noisudden rise in the mortality rate in that city's department store personnel yet. Whenyou next take the escalator to yardage or hats, however, you may be forced to reflect that more things can happen in the marts of merchandising than are dreamed of in the advertisements.

sound-values and quantity as. well as accent. POEMS FOR PUZZLED PEOPLE, by Frank William Denny; Exposition Press, N.Y.; $2. Essays in jog-trot rhyme on farming, feminine fashions, war, education and the American ideal. OF DREAMS AND MEMORIES, by E.

Lois Exposition Press, N.Y.; $2. Prayers, jingles and psalms. THIS WAS APRIL, by Anrfe Dodson Buck; Exposition Press, N.Y.; $2. Lessons from nature in American setting. GENERAL THE WHITE HOUSE, by'Randle Bond Truett; Hastings House, N.Y.; $2.75.

Pictorial views of the White House, inside and out, from the first architects to the present, with historical notes and introduction. HOUSE PLANTS IN EVERY WINDOW, by Sophia Naumburg; Floral Art, West Englewood, N.J.; $2. What to choose for each exposure, and how to plant and care CRITICISM WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS, by Vivienne Kock; New Directions, Norfolk, $2. Makers of Modern Literature series. Detailed critical analysis of the stories, novels and plays as well as the poetry of one of the leading experimental poets; the section on "Paterson" will be specially helpful to readers of the newly published cantos.

RELIGION YOUCAN CHANGE THE WORLD, by Falher James Keller, M.M.; Signet Books, N.Y.; $.25. The founder of 'The Christophers" expounds this Catholic lay movement in its principles and practices. DOORWAY TO A HAPPY HOME, by Mrs. Clarence H. Hamilton; Bobbs-Merrlll Indianapolis; $2.50.

Bringing religion into the home as the decisive factor in happy family relationships. VERSE PATERSON, by William Carlos Williams; New Directions, Norfolk, $1.50. A "personal epic" in four parts of which we here have the first two with the general theme of man in relation to his times, interspersed with prose explanations and introspections. THE SIGNATURE OF ALL THINGS, by Kenneth Rexroth; New Directions, Norfolk, $2.50. "Simple, personal poems, as close as I can make them to integral experience," says the author, but none the less with philosophical overtones and an intricate, highly conscious composition (in the musical sense) In terms of Real Traaic -v ft I I A for an indoor garden of beauty and with special notes on "symptoms" and pests.

I DON'T CALL A MAN A DOG, I by Will Judy; Judy Publishing! x- Articles, charts, statistics, and photographic illustrations covering the research, field work, and collections of the Institution. y. SPORT CALIFORNIA SALT WATER FISHING, by J. Charles Davis, 2d; A. S.

Barnes and Co N.Y.; $5. What fish are where and when and how to catch them from pier or party boat, with illustrations and BASKET BALL QUIZ BOOK, by Clair Bee; Greenberg, N.Y.; cloth, paper $1. Turn to the back of the book for the answers to 600 true-false questions, interspersed with historical, statistical and biographical tidbits, and join the experts. MEMOIRS LADIES IN PANTS, by Mabel R. Gerken; Exposition Press, N.Y.; $2.50.

Daily diary of a woman aircraft plant worker in wartime. of THE KNIFE BEHIND YOU, by James Benet; Harper and Brothers. N.Y.; $2.50. Even at a beach party, the new bathing suit worn, with fine architectural effect, by red-haired Fran-cesca Hollister was discussed by her companions in terrn of a new line being introduced by the department store sportswear buyer. Vince and Andy were soon at it again, flailing the subject of price cuts.

Into this world "of inventories and policies, waybills and bonus shipments to which the customer never penetrates, comes a most upsetting intrusion in department store routine the murder of the store detective. The immediate and pressing question to those, most concerned if not death and and a lurking criminal, but the effect on sales. Will customers be scared away, or, will curiosity bring them runing? (A murder on the-premises turns put to "have more sales pull than a Dollar Day.) KNIFE AT THE BACK Franceses says that everyone in the personnel force has a knife poised ready to thrust Into the back of every other. This, and many other things, are hard for young Allen 'Tinker, a lawyer in love with Francesca, to believe. Tinker is no under-world shyster or mouthpiece.

He has to learn the hard way, with accompanying bumps and bruises both physical and that gunmen and tricksters, plots and counterplots ME coffee to toast success of his Behind You. Tribune photo the Crop Fiction $3.50. A successful but inwardly Insecure executive finds himself close to a crack up, both in his work and his personal relationships "but works himself into the clear with life 'pointing in a new direction through the influence of a hermit-philosopher father. THE STRANGE LAND, by Ned Calmer; Charles Scribner's Sons, N.Y.; $3. How a critical week near the; clese of the last war brings personal crisis, in the lives of 12 Americans caught in the web of circumstance.

JUBILEE TRAIL, by Gwen Bris- tow; Thomas Y. Crowell N.Y.; $3. Literary Guild selection. The "Jubilee Trail" by mule team be tween California and Santa Fe was an even rougher journey of the spirit for a young New York ladjf of fashion in the days when Los Angeles was a Pueblo and California, nominally Mexican, was also a colonization project on which the Czar of Russia kept an eye. HEAVEN IS SO HIGH, by Rosa He Llebermari; Bobbs-Merrill Co Indianapolis; $2.75.

Short storiei showing that humor and humanity flourish within convent walls. THE HORSE'S MOUTH, by Joyce Gary; Harper "and Brothers, N.Y,; $3. The comic spirit playa' over the career of an artist JeehoK' is also a bit of a rogue and same--times more than a bit of a tool, with the same ebullience, and some of the same characters, of Surprised" and "To Be -T Book-of-the-Month Club selection. Back Stage irr Russia MY THREE YEARS IN MOSCOW, by Lieut Gen. Walter Bedell 1 Smith; J.

B. Lippincott and Co, $3.75. The former U. S- ambassador to the U.S.S.R. reports on conditions and prospects as he observed them from an unusually advantageous position backstage behind the "iron curtain," where he eould judge the actors and their per formances -Without the greasepaint mask of propaganda.

I It jv-yflC" Eliiabeth Goudrja wecrres old legends oi her beloved Com- iwoll Into new story with a touch of fcdrylcmdln Its romance. MARTYR DOCTOR Chicago; JZ.OU. uarioons, anecaoic. verses, epitaphs, Biblical quotations (alas, unfavorable), notes on care and feeding, a plea for the rescue of the word "bitch" from the low esteem into whicr it has fallen in short, a complete compendium collected by the editor of "Dog World" for fellow cynophiles. REFERENCE ANNUAL REPORT OF THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, edited by A.

Wetmore; U.S. Printing Office, Washington, D.C.; $2.56. Hero in Nove to listen to him, ridiculed him, THE CRY AND THE COVENANT, by Morton Thompson; Double-day and Garden City, NX; $3.50. Xgnai Phillpp SemmelwIs wai a Hungarian physician and itirgeoh of the early 19th century, who devoted a lifetime to diaeover-Ing the cause of childbed fever which, at the time he began etudiee at the General Hospital in Vienna, caused the agonized death of four out of every ten women who entered the lying-in ward. Having determined the cause of the Semmelweis spent the reft of his trying futilelyito epread his knoweldge; wasy defeated by the "intolerance and ftupid.

blindness of the medical profession of his day, sanitation of modern hospitals and the sure, deft ministrations of our medical men and surgeons, the recital of procedures in the Vienna General Hospital, then considered one of the world's best hospitals, simpty appaling. Nothing, nothing was known of sanitation; prac-tioners, students and instructors alike, would plunge tbeir hands into the lnsides of cadavers, seeking to determine the cause of death, and thexi, without so much as a rinsing of the hands, rush off to attend women in labor. The Jdeath rate was appalling. It obsessed Semmelweis. He worked deaperatky, night and day, to Jearn the cause of devasting childbed fever BJfid eventually uncovered it.

He checked and re-checked his finds, assured himself he was right and then began the crusade for Semmelweij was born in 191 Napoleon had spewed over 11. kj.m.m.1a elimination. The answer was simple enough; cleanliness. Unbe lievably, maddeningly, "doctors refused Hungarians were. scrvue ycvyi.

miumi cultured capital and was under.the domination of the Ger-mans and Austrians, "who regarded Hungarians as bumpkins and boors. Yt it was to this enemy, city that Semmelweis repaired when he determined to become a doctor. The story of the contumely heaped upon him by instructors and fellow students runs, through Thompson'! story of Semmelweis like a dark, muddy river. Thompson relates in detail the sordid story of hospitalization and "medical practices of those days. To us today who know the listening finally drove hira back to his native Bud a.

He died in bitterness, poverty and obscurity. And yet he is the man of whom the famous Lister later said: To this great son of Hungary medicine owes most Without Semmelwies I would be nothing." A rare tribute? Thompson writes too rhapsodically at times, in an italic fervor. Arid often Is nauseatingly clinical in his descriptions of dissections and the mechanics of childbirth. But' he has done a notable Jobin brinjinf to merited attention this 19th century martyr. 1 0.