DISPUTED PASSAGE

Lloyd Douglas' name is a password to quick sales and easy rentals. This is somewhat his usual pattern: it is a much more pretentious piece of work, with perhaps less obvious sermonising, and with more than a touch of the Deeping quality. He has a facility of characterization and of plot structure, which makes his stories easy reading (even when, underneath, you don't quite believe it would happen the way he makes it happen). The question weighed in the balance this time is that of the function of medicine, as pure science or as social science. There are two men who typify the two aspects, and between them stands the young medical student, torn between two loyalties. He chooses pure science -- then comes ""the girl"" and his apple cart tilts perilously. But there lies the story. Thoroughly readable, if not profound.