LAUGHING DEATH: The Untold Story

by Vincent Zigas ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 1990

An often preposterous memoir of the events surrounding the identification of a rare form of encephalitis occurring in a New Guinea tribe--a feat that won a Nobel Prize for its chief researcher. In 1950, the author, who characterizes himself as ""a simple young man who knew very little and believed a lot,""was an inexperienced medical officer assigned to provide health services to several ""stone age"" tribes in Australian New Guinea. With a smattering of anthropological background, a kind heart, elementary medical skills, and a romantic imagination, he became intrigued with a fatal disease that struck one particular tribe and that the natives attributed to magic. Although his own experience was limited, Zigas succeeded in interesting his superiors and eventually future Nobel Prize winner Carleton Gajdusek (Medicine, 1976). But for three-quarters of the book, Zigas himself is its hero; and the reader must slog through his eccentric, garrulous, muddy prose to get a glimmer of light on the scene he tries to describe and his role in it. Even so, there is something naive and endearing about Zigas, and when Gajdusek finally arrives to do the thorough study that won him the Nobel, Zigas pays him devoted though not always lucid tribute. Gajdusek himself writes what seems to be a reluctant foreword, calling these recollections of his helper ""historical fiction"" and assigning them a brand-new literary category: ""abstract expressionist ironical parody."" Indeed, the book could pass for parody of a sounder medical-anthropological work, although this does not seem to have been the author's intent. There is the germ of a good movie here, about an innocent, idealistic young doctor trying to deliver some western medicine to a group of primitive peoples speaking ""700 different languages""--none of which he is fluent in--and who stumbles upon a disease whose formal identification has implications for other serious slow-developing vital infections. But as anthropology or medicine, it has very limited value; and as a lucid narrative, it has less.

Pub Date: March 1, 1990

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Humana

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1990

Categories: NONFICTION