Making the Modern Medical School: The Wisconsin Stories

Robert Oliver

Science History Publications/USA, $24.95, pp 165

ISBN 0 88135 362 0

UK readers can order this book from the BMJ Bookshop, tel: 020 7383 6244

Rating:

I almost abandoned this book on the first page. A painfully twisted metaphor about birth, miscarriage, gestation, cross-fertilisation, and infertility was not a good start. Robert Oliver tends to overwork the metaphors as when he talks of wars and battles or when he cites William Butler Yeats later in the book. I found his style most comfortable when he got into the swing of historical descriptive writing, and I was soon enjoying his graphic picture of the midwest of the United …