Arrowsmith Review

Well, I finished it. This was a seriously difficult book for me to read and I'll tell you why (since this is the purpose of the blog!!). I am not interested in medical science to begin with and also I've discovered that I really like character novels, which this is not. Sure it has characters in it and follows one man through his career, but there is no real development of the main character, Martin Arrowsmith. When Martin's wife died I wasn't so sad, in fact I wasn't a hundred percent sure she did die. The book is not only written about science it is written very scientifically, just the facts.

Martin is a doctor who in college has his ideals and is forced to change those ideals several times throughout the book. At one point after he and Leora (his first wife) are married he moves to a small town to be a small town doctor and for a short time lives with his in-laws. This was not what I expected him to do and in fact after a few years does not turn out well for him, so he moves on to work for the Public Health official in Iowa. His boss, Mr. Pickerbaugh, is a politician. He writes silly little poems about health and makes public appearances to promote health. He's a loud, rather silly man and Martin doesn't think too highly of him. Mr. Pickerbaugh ends up being elected to congress and so Martin takes his place and he is more interested in his research than he is in kissing up to the public so again he needs to move on. He moves to Chicago to work in an expensive, "catering to the rich" type medical office and does okay, but he gets sick of the rich people and just wants to research and do his work so he finally ends up in New York working with Dr. Gottlieb (see my previous post) at McGurk Industries where he is able to just do research and is finally truly happy. Through all of this his wife (they are unable to have children) follows him around and supports him better than he deserves, especially since he casually cheats on her (mostly in thought and slightly in action) with Mr. Pickerbaugh's daughter, practically in front of Leora's face. She is truly the example of a supporting wife, but in my opinion she's a little too supportive and needs a little bit more gumption to stand up to Martin and give him a good talking to.

While at McGurk he finds a cure for the plague and goes to an island in the West Indies (his wife follows him there too so she can nurse him if he gets ill) to cure the people there of the plague and conduct his experiments. I actually enjoyed this part of the book. There was a little bit more focus on characters and the sorrows of the plague (kind of sad I enjoyed the sad part the best-- hmmm what does this say about me? Again Martin meets a woman while he's away from his wife (she stayed in another part of the island where it was supposed to be safer) he casually cheats again (mainly kissing and dreaming of her) and then runs to bring his wife with him and finds her dead with the plague. He mourns and kind of ruins his experiments and then returns to New York.

I could go on and on telling the story, but this is how it sums up. He gets married again to the woman he met in the West Indies; she is very wealthy and he finds himself in the world that he has always detested. It is a world where people are more concerned with money and finding favor than they are with the research and science. In the end I really didn't like Martin because of his final decision. In truth I never really did find myself liking him much, but when he decided he needed to work full time and so he left his wife and son to move to a cabin in Vermont with a fellow worker to do research uninterrupted, that was the last straw. A man who writes a note to his wife and says "maybe I'll see my son when he's grown, he can come out and work with me" is truly not a man, he is a coward. Don't get me wrong I'm thankful for the people who have done this kind of research which allows for immunizations for my children and cures people of horrid diseases, but I hope none of them acted so selfishly to do this.

If you choose to read this book I suggest you do it with a medical thesaurus nearby and many hours to devote yourself to reading a scientific tale. All in all, not one of my favorites.