Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1925-05-02
THE LIBRARY TABLE
BY THE BOOKLOVER

WHICH is more lQeallSJlCJ more
worth the devotion of a lifetime, more
serviceable to humanity. the prac-
tice of the art of healing or medical
research in a laboratory? This
question is discussed-and answered
with occasionally Sinclair Lewis in
his novel "Arrowsmith." Martin Ar
rowsmith's first allegiance is to re-
search, from the time when a IA
year-old boy he studies Gray's
Anatomy" in the foul office of old
Doc Vickerson of Elk Mills. in the
State of Winnemac wisconsin,.
Later at the State University he be-
comes the disciple of Gottlieb, Ger
man Jew, whose work on immun-
ology has given him fame in the East
and in Europe. Except for brief
periods of reaction to the practical,
Gottlieb remains his guide and in
spiration. At one time during his
medical course he banishes from his
faith the brilliant insanity of Max
Gottlieb's genius" and becomes the
follower Of Dean Silva of the Winnie
mac Medical School, whose creed is
to help give the world as many good
physicians, great healers, as / can"
After graduation Martin spends two
years as an inferno at the General
Hospital of Zenith (Milwaukee).
Then, still holding the Silva philos-
ophy, he retires to WheatsyIvania
in North Dakota, the home of his
Wifes parents, to become a general
practitioner. Success does not fol-
low him and he leaves North Da-
kota to become an assistant health
officer in Iowa. Later he accepts a
post as pathologist in a Chicago
clinic and finally goes to the McGurk
Institute of Biology in New York
evidently intended as a composite
of the Rockefeller Institute and sew
eral other similar research organiza-
tons. By this time he has returned
to his early research faith and his
worship of Gottlieb, who is also now
at McGurk, after being forced out
or the Winnemac Medical School.
"Arrowsmith" may be looked upon
as a species of long debate on research
versus medical practice, with Colt
heb and Dean Silva as the chief
protagonists. Gottlieb's pursuit of
pure research reaches the point of
fanaticism. He is satisfied to spend
lifetime on experimentation, testing
and proving endlessly, reluctant to
publish any results of his research,
caring everything about the truths
he discovers, but little about their
practical application. He tells Martin
in the medical school days that only
few of his students wish to become
scientists and those, ! seize them, I
denounce them, | teach them right
away the ultimate lesson of science,
which is to wait and doubt" He is
fiercely scornful of the practitioners,
looking upon them all as CONNER
cialists. Yet when his wife becomes
seriously i'll and he fears that she
has cancer, he turnes helplessly to
Dean Silva. The Gottlieb who
scOffed at medical credos, at 'carpen-
ters' and 'pillmongers,' had forgotten
what he knew of diagnosis, and when
he was III, or his family, he called
tor the doctor as desperately as any
oackwoods layman to whom illness
was the black malignity of unknown
devils" Dean Silva comes to the
bedside of Gottlieb's wife, full Of
excessive benignity, chuckling to him
silf, When he's got somthing the
matter he doesn't run for Arrenhius
or Jacques Loeb, but for me-"
X X X
The test of Martins faith comes
when, having almost proved the sue
cess of "phage" as a cure for bubonic
tute to ST. Hubert in the West Indies
10 fight a plague epidemic. Gottlieb
is now director of McGurk He calls
Martin to his Office and says: IF /
could trust you, Martin, to use the
phage with only half your patients
and keep the others as controls, IN
der normal hygienic conditions but
without the phage, then you could
make an absolute determination of it's
"a lTIa 10
for the ultimate scientific test, but
when he reaches St. Hubert he finds
that all the authorities, and even his
own colleague, Sondelius veteran
fighter of tropical diseases, are
against him. He perseveres until per-
sonal tragedy weakens his will pow
er; but at the end of the epidemic
he comes back without that absolute
determination" which Gottlieb has
ordered.
1t is obvious that Sinclair Lewis
believes that the rather inhuman
Gottlieb has chosen the better part"
He says of him: There may have
been in the shadowy heart of Max
Gottlieb a diobolic insensibility to di-
vine pity, to suffering mankind;
there may have been mere resent
ment of the doctors who considered
his science of value only as it was
handy to advertising their business
of healing; there may have been the
obscure and passionate and unscru-
pulous demand of genius for privacy.
Certainly, he who had lived to study
the methods of immuniZing mankind
against disease had little interest in
actually using those methods" On
the other hand He was of the great
benefactor of humanity. There will
never, in any age, be an effort to
end the great epidemics or the petty
infections which will not have been
influenced by Max Gottlieb's re-
searches. He was, in fact.
an authentic scientist"
Some of the reasons for the hos
tility in this country, as we'll as in
Europe, toward Count Michael Kar-
olyi are revealed in his memoirs,
Fighting the World: the Struggle
for Peace" Count Karolyi, Hun
garian pacifist, internationalist, aris-
tocrat- turned socialist, is today ac-
cused by his own people of RESPONSE
bility for the ACKNOWLEDGMENT of the
Austro Hungarian empire. One OF
the leading statesmen of the central
powers during the war period, he
saw as early as 1916 that their de-
feat was inevitable and began a cam
paign for a separate Austro- Hun
garien peace and even a peace for
Hungary apart from Austria. He
tells of the rapid disintegration of
the Hapsburg monarchy under the
weak Emperor Charles and of the
failure of the nobility to realize the
approach of defeat. His efforts for
separate peace were made in the
hope Of saving for his country as
much as possible from the wreck,