ONE OF THE DARK PLACES

Davis strives mightily to resist the infection of cliches in this Jungle Medical Novel but the patient is left in critical condition. The scene is Burma during the construction of the Burma Road and the villains are scrub typhus and official interference with research. Twelve years previously Captain Nathan Devlin accidentally killed his wife in Mexico by infecting her with typhus. Since then Devlin has dedicated himself to bacteriological research. When an epidemic seems imminent in Burma, he is sent as team leader to fight it. But Devlin is now a fanatic about research, which activity he will not muddy up by simultaneously attempting to find a vaccine or mitigating serum. Fundamental research questions about the type of typhus they are fighting must be answered first. He and another doctor spend months heroically amassing background detail. When Devlin hears about a completely isolated village that has been stricken, he sets off for it but gets lost in the jungle. Meanwhile, all his work is ruined when a fatuous colonel introduces the use of serums that are ""little better than Pepsi Cola."" The two main characters' backgrounds are too patly tragic, and those wives have been dying since Arrowsmith.