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DR. NINA AND THE PANTHER by Shirley P. Wheeler

DR. NINA AND THE PANTHER

By

Pub Date: Sept. 1st, 1976
Publisher: Dodd, Mead

The author is one of the daughters of her remarkable subject ""Dr. Nina"" Price, who died at the age of ninety in 1974 after over half a century of pioneering medical practice in Pennsylvania. But this is not the usual lib statement. Nina had confronted more than sex discrimination in a life cross-stitched with crises from the day when, at nine, she sang her way past a panther crouched near the tent where her mother, a Seventh Day Adventist, awaited the Coming. She became the ""whiz-kid protegee"" of the church, which sent her to school, allowed her to study medicine, and arranged what was to be a disastrous marriage. Nina suffered poverty, humiliation, and cruelty before she finally left the Church and her husband (who collected her earnings). The account of her practice in Stroudsburg, Pa. (before and after her second happy marriage) brings her close to the ideal of the all-loving and-wise G.P.--performing a kitchen-table appendectomy, comforting as well as curing children and the poor. Although one might wish to come closer to the essential Dr. Nina, the author's own admiration is tempered by good taste and the good sense not to gild a lily.