DOCTORS DISAGREE

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 128, 26 November 1938, Page 27

DOCTORS DISAGREE

REPLY TO "THE CITADEL"

One of the most sensational novels of recent years was '"The Citadel," A. J. Cronin's critical study of the medical profession and some of its aspects. Now comes a counterblast —Mr. Francis Brett Young's "Dr. Bradley Remembers," the life story of a general practitioner—one of that "large class of men whose faithful service has been too often and too glibly criticised," as "Mr. Young says. Both writers are members of the medical profession, and each knows what he is talking about. Reviewing this latest novel with a medical background, Vernon Fane, in "The Sphere," says:—

"This is a book which has all the feeling of a best seller, and I mean that in no derogatory sense of dismissing it as purely popular stuff, with no further appeal to the intelligence, but as a good story with enough humanity and enough of the technical side of doctoring reported and discussed to make it a success. Mr. Francis Brett Young knows his subject, an advantage to any writer. He knows well enough to write about it without that great, air of conscious research which distorts the work of so many writers' on specialised subjects, -and makes their facts dull and their fiction heavy- He has some years of personal experience as a background, and the instinct of a practised novelist in his selection. There is nothing sensational in this long, sympathetically conceived story. It depends for its strength and, I think, for its success on the sense of proportion which the author has never lost, and on his unfailing instinct for the simple humanities."

Mr. Fane ranks "Dr. Bradley Remembers" with "My Brother Jonathan," which he says are the two best books of Mr. Young's career.