FIVE PATIENTS: The Hospi- tal Explained. By Michael. Crichton. Knopf. $5.95.
Here is a ... Ita hierarchy of medical stu- dents. ... Michael Crichton who somehow
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Reader 9 *? Fare FAMILY PORTRAIT. By Catherine Drinker Bewea. Atlantic Littlr. Brown. $7.50. Here is the story of a remark* able family of ebullient, competitive, talented, independent and accomplished people. Their name is Drinker, and they came from Philadelphia. Not the least talented of the Drinker's six children is the author, who has written a number of major biographies. She was the youngest, It years the junior of the firstborn, Harry, who grew up to be a famous corporation lawyer and an amateur narcologist of major standing. Next came Jim, the only easygoing member of the family, who became a business man; then there was Cecil, who became an internationally known physiologist; then Erneeta, whose beauty was fabulous, and Phil, who became a nationally known authority on industrial pollution and invented the iron lung. _ There was the older generation too, including the father, Henry S. Drinker, a mining engineer and lawyer who became president of Lehigh University, and Aunt Cecilia, a portrait painter who won many awards. This is a story of strong personalities growing up and finding their places in life, not always smoothly. It is told to asL. intimate, impressionistic style; that is, there is not a coherent, organized biography of each individual, and some of the facto come out obliquely. But the technique is more effective than a straight narrative. Here is an unusual combination of an el >quent writer and an engrossing story. t
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Reader's Fnre student. He has since acquired his degree as a physician. Crichton dramatizes his story by giving a graphic account of the treatment accorded five patients; the cases are not necessarily typical, but are illuminating. Then he proceeds to explain, report, comment and philosophize on the medical practices involved. One case shows what happens in a large emergency ward. An* otter underlines two points—the amazingly sophisticated labora-
tory tests that have been developed, and the staggering rise in the costs of hospital care. Another exemplifies the advantages and disadvantages of being a patient In a teaching hospital Crichton calls a scalpel a scalpel. He raises many questions and offers personal answers to many of them, such questions as to why shouldn't hospitals stop concentrating on curative measures and get out into the
has used his talents as a narrator to get his message across about the hospitals. Laymen will understand a lot more about medical and hospital problems if they read Crichton's book. It meets a real need, and meets it well. m
community with preventive medicine? How can medical education be lifted out of its tradi• • • tion-bound patterns? Shouldn't THEIR TATTERED FLAGS doctors give, less emphasis to By FRANK E. VANDIVER disease (medical science) and Harper. $lt. more emphasis to the patient '""""It la hard to imagine a fresh (the art of medicine)? What will approach to the Civil War. Yet hospitals of the future be like? Frank E. Vandiver, a genuinely This happens to be the same authoritative Southern historian Michael Crichton who somehow practicing his craft at Rice Unifound time to write a recent versity in Houston, has achieved best-selling suspense thriller, just that "The Andromeda Strain." He He calls his book "The Epic of
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the Confederacy," which makes it sound sonorous and a bit dull.* It is anything but that. Actually, it is an impressionistic history, from Southern orientation , of the tragic fratricidal conflict. Imagine a fresco of the war's highlights painted, not by Michelangelo but by Renoir. The text of the book proper, not counting acknowledgements, bibliography and notes, is only 306 pages. Vet, within this spatial limitation, Vandiver manages to spotlight the important political, social, and diplomatic • s well as the military eventi of the war Certainly the details cannot be extensive, but Vandiver is exceptionally good at
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the profile, the vignette, the sketch. The writing is brilliant. In fact, at times it seems too good. When conserving time by drawing on his great knowledge of Southern history, he describes how this or that central figure felt about a given problem. We almost believe we are within the mind of that personality until we suddenly realize that what we are getting k Vandiver's own thinking. Jefferson Davis, president of the doomed Confederacy, gets his first fair shake in some time. Perhaps he rated his own strategic abiUty too highly; nevertheless, nobody else of similar administrative experience and
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