MEDICAL MEN AS WRITERS
SIR,—II is a privilege of reviewers to make disagree- able and unsupported generalisations, but I am sure Charles Causley cannot have thought, many times before. he said that a certain book is 'all very much above the average literary performances of medical men.' How on ea-rth does one arrive at an 'average literary performance' of any large group of people? We must include several who have made and some- times kept modest reputations as writers—Rabelais, Bridges, Conan Doyle, Chekhov, Somerset Maugham, Schweitzer, Livingstone, St. John Gogarty, Brett Young, Cronin and Richard Gordon; this lot defies averaging for a start off, though they have pulled in the readers from time to time and even earned the praise of reviewers, in some cases. Then we have the author of St. Luke's Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles. Then Trotter, Treves, Sherrington, Osier, Ryle and, finally, all the minor reminiscences and fiction of enormously varying merit. The bulk of work is so huge and the quality so various that it defies averaging or even generalisation; although it is probably fairly safe to say that if you pick a book by a doctor and one by a journalist, at random, the former will usually' be the better bet.—Yours faithfully,
D. R. CARGILL
24 High Street, Maldon, Essex
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