DEADLY MEDICINE

Sixteen doctors who with the help of arsenic, antimony and morphine (usually) were able to dispose of their wives and others -- motivated, for the most part, by some financial benefit. Author Kent makes another affiliation which probably no one can disprove -- they were usually ""runty"" in size. Be that as it may -- this is a nondescriptly scripted selection of famous doctor-killers, some of whom you know: Dr. Crippen certainly; the American Mudgett or H.H. Holmes whom Robert Bloch recently used in a novel; and Dr. Thomas Neill Cream, John Cashman's Gentleman from Chicago. Among the more interesting others there's the Victorian Dr. Pritchard, all pomp and piety, and a French Doctor Petiot, found guilty of 24 victims, confessing to about 63, and probably accountable for 100. New Hampshire's mercy-killing Dr. Sander is the concluding antidote. . . . One of those British imports, in very, very fine print -- like on an arsenic bottle -- which must have intimidated the proofreader.