Vintage Book Not As a Stranger by Morton Thompson

Reference id: 20Gny8r4nj4 870

Vintage book "Not as a Stranger" by Morton Thompson, copyright 1954.

This book has seen better days. I hope someone will want it. I cannot bear to toss it out or repurpose it.

"I first read this book in high school. Reading it after 50 years in the medical field I found it was an entirely different book. It is the story of an idealistic man, Lucas Marsh, who, as a boy, followed the local town doctors around. Despite the objections of both parents he never wanted to do anything but become a physician. He becomes one, having married a Swedish nurse in order to finance his education. He and his wife move to a small town where he joins the practice of an older doctor who hopes to retire soon. Lucas is extremely idealistic and has a hard time adjusting to some of what he sees and experiences, including doctors who are incompetent, doctors who pad their charges with unnecessary procedures, kickbacks from the druggists for prescriptions written, and the way doctors protect each other. He also resents his wife, now that he doesnt need her to pay his tuition. A typhoid fever outbreak, and then his first hunting trip with 3 other men soon changes his life and humanizes him so by the end of the book I came to like him. This story is set in the 1910s and 1920s but the issues faced by Lucas arent much different today." - Goodreads review.