THE LIFE OF SIR ROBERT JONES
By Frederic Watson
The modern biographer treads a difficult path. If he refuses to indulge in the precarious feats of the pseudo-Stracheys, who, like trick-cyclists, have had their day, he is in danger of reverting to the more antique school of monumental bio- graphy, where the ghost of greatness is sealed up for ever in a marmoreal cenotaph, weighty with document and ornate with eulogy. It is a pleasure to record that Mr. Watson has erred neither to the right nor to the left. He was fortunate in his subject. Sir Robert Jones was not a figure that often occupied the public eye ; members of his profession do not court publicity, and he, perhaps the greatest orthopaedic surgeon in medical history, had too true a sense of values and too great a love for his work to step beyond his professional reputation. Yet the barest record of his labours and achieve- ments would convince a reader of his greatness, and Mr. Watson has given us much more. He writes with affection and simplicity, and succeeds in inspiring a similar affection in his reader, who is thus able to appreciate to the full the magnitude of Sir Robert Jones' work and the tragedy of his disappointment when the hospital at Shepherd's Bush, which he had built up as a centre for post-War orthopaedics, was closed down by the Ministry of Pensions. For like all great men, he was not content with superlative efficiency in his immediate work, but had always his attention fixed on the larger issues of National Health and the alleviation of all the suffering which survived as a legacy from the War. The book (Hodder and Stoughton, 12s. 6d.) is well written and easily read.
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