A SURGEON'S WORLD
By
Outspoken autobiography of a Chicago surgeon, sometimes ornate as to manner, but -- with an abundance of insides stories, good reading as such things go. Hungarian born, the Thoreks were forced by a pogrom to emigrate and they came to Chicago's lower West Side where Thorek -- determined to be a doctor -- snare-drummed his way through the University of Chicago and Rush Medical School. He started out in obstetrics in the slums -- his practice grew to include many of Chicago's ghettos -- he was finally reunited with his boyhood sweetheart, and married her -- and he worked his way up to the top. He founded the American hospital, achieved substantial financial and professional success and records here many phases of his profession, -- plastic surgery, rejuvenation and monkey glands (Voronoff was a good friend of his), abnormal sexuality, hazards from misguided patients and their relatives, outhanssis a doctor's conflict of the whole truth versus anything but truth, celebrities as patients; and so on. No great dignity here, but sincers, hearty, in the ""old doc"" school of memoirs.