A MEDICAL PUBLICIST

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26841, 4 August 1948, Page 2

A MEDICAL PUBLICIST

Creation’s Heir. By Harold Dearden. Andrew Melrose. 15s 6d. Dr Dearden is an indefatigable writer. Doctors turned author always seem able to command a considerable public, and Dr Dearden, as an ex-nerve specialist, ought to know how the minds of his public work. This book, though in line with his other works, in that it deals with efficient living from the standpoint of man the machine, is less medical and more philosophical than usual. The author contends that the mess in which the world now is results largely if not entirely from the clumsy thinking of civilised man. He analyses the mechanism of thinking and points out how badly that mechanism is used. There is here nothing very new, and nothing very startling. In fact, any reasonably well trained thinker will find it dull, obvious and laboured. But that is not to say that it is without value. The book is not addressed to the trained thinker, but to Dr Dearden’s own half-educated or uneducated public, and doubtless many of these will find both interest and excitement in his analysis of the faulty working of their indifferent mental apparatus. For instance, he finds the main bar to happy Anglo-American relations in the fact that each expects the other to be a sort of Englishman, or American, as the case may be, and is disappointed when this turns out not to be the case. This discovery is one that has been made in print repeatedly for at least half a century, and the other revelations in the book are about on a par with it. The chapters on habit formation are sound, but, like most of the rest of the book, not new, and not particularly in need of restatement. In fact, with the present paper shortage in England, one wonders why this book was printed. P. H. W. N.