The genesis of cancer. A study in the history of ideas

Mobius coined the term "pathography", and since then, many practising doctors have used their clinical knowledge in attempting more fully to understand historical figures. The results are sometimes one-sided and smig, but ifused sensitively, as by Sir George Pickering or Lord Brain, the medical biography can be an exceptionally interesting historical exercise. William Ober belongs with the first-class practitioners of this genre. The present volume collects essays which he has published in medicaljournals over the past decade. In addition to the opening essay which gives the book its title, Ober has written on Swinburne's masochism; on the relation of Lady Chatterley to D. H. Lawrence's mental and physical state while composing his novel; on Keats and opium; on three "mad" eighteenth-century poets (Collins, Cowper, Smart); and on Chekhov, William Carlos Williams, the Earl of Rochester, Thomas Shadwell, and Socrates. The essays vary in quality Dr. Ober does not have much new to say about Chekhov or Socrates, but he is exceptionally interesting on Boswell, Lawrence, and the mad poets but the volume itself is distinguished by three sterling qualities. First, Ober has researched his subjects exceptionally well. He has immersed himself in the literary productions as well as the biographical details (published and unpublished) of his group of literary men. His essay on Boswell, for instance, contains a wealth of detail about Boswell's many attacks of venereal disease, culled from the massive private record which Boswell left behind. In other studies, Ober successfully uses art to illuminate life, and vice versa. Second, Ober writes with a witty and elegant style. His essays are pleasant to read; the volume is ideal bedside reading and frequently entices the reader to move from the essays to the actual works of Dr. Ober's subjects. Finally, Dr. Ober approaches his theme with a sound combination ofpsycho-history and retrospective physical diagnosis. Generally, Ober is Freudian in his interpretations, but he is never dogmatic and has a splendid sense of the difference between speculation and fact. He approaches his figures as complicated human beings, not simply as collections of symptoms. His collection of essays deserves to be widely read.