As I Remember Him: The Biography of R.S.

THIS remarkable book is a legacy to his generation from a great doctor, great scientist, great talker, and a complete human being. Dr. Hans Zinsser of the Harvard Medical School, and author of that fascinating book, Rats, Lice and History, has set down, under the transparent fiction of a biography of R. S., the best remembered personal experiences of his life—his best stories, his best thoughts, his matured reflections on life and how it behaves, from obstetriME to education and research and war. And he has written his book as he talks to his students (who regard him as their best lecturer) and to his friends. For this is a man of many friends, and of an insatiable zest for experience. And what a life! Recent books have shown us how interesting the life of a country doctor can be. But this man, Zinsser, went on through the amusing, pathetic, tragic experiences of an ambulance doctor to the wider field of research in bacteriology. And his success there carried him afield as an expert, to typhus camps in Serbia, to China, to Persia, to Mexico in search of rats, to Japan. And he carried with him, in addition to his research equipment, one of those liberal, observant minds, well-stocked with education, humorous, reflective, optimistic, which takes as much as it gives, and stores it away to ripen.