I’ve been talking about the reasons the novel Magnificent Obsession became a bestseller after its release in the fall of 1929. One very important reason was the fact that it was a medical drama. We’re used to that sort of thing now; it seems like there’s always, at any time, at least one current TV series set in a hospital. But in 1929, it was rare for novelists to be able to write authoritatively about the lives of doctors and nurses.
As Reader’s Digest editor Charles Ferguson would later write in Cosmopolitan Magazine, “So authentic and convincing are the medical passages in the novels of Doctor Lloyd Cassel Douglas that not a few of the thousands of letters he receives each year are addressed to him as a medico. These letters detail the clinical histories of people who have suffered many things and now come to him as a last resort. Nor is this surprising. Every reference he makes to a disease or its treatment is invariably checked by the best authorities. Moreover, while Lloyd Douglas never studied medicine, he has read avidly on medical topics since early college days when the hankering to be a doctor first laid hold on him” (Charles W. Ferguson, “Lloyd C. Douglas, Cosmopolite,” Cosmopolitan, November 1938, p. 8).
And doctors noticed.
The magazine, American Medicine, printed a review of Magnificent Obsession. “This is one of the most unusual novels we have read in a long time,” the reviewer said – and it must have been unusual, indeed, for a novel of any kind to be reviewed in a medical journal. The reviewer explains why it seemed appropriate: “The setting for the story is medical throughout, and remarkably true to life, even to the accurate description of the latest technique in blood transfusion…. Whether one regards this book as a theme story or as a human-interest novel, it is well worth reading, especially for those in the medical profession or associated with it. The present reviewer, in fact, picked up the volume one night after dinner, and could not bring himself to put it down until he had reached the last page many hours later.”
Another medical journal, The Canadian Lancet and Practitioner, also gave the book a positive review.
And doctors wrote to Douglas. On one occasion Douglas compiled some blurbs from his fan mail and gave them to his publisher for possible use in advertising. (This can be found in the Jewell Stevens File, Moore Library, Special Collections, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.) Here is one of those comments:
“From a prominent physician in Oklahoma City: ‘I have read this book through twice; parts of it several times more. The medical references are correct; excellent! What percent of this book is fiction?'” (That question at the end must have made Douglas smile.)
As I mentioned in earlier posts, Douglas was well-connected with the faculty at the University of Michigan Medical School during his days in Ann Arbor, from 1915 to 1921, and he stayed in touch with some of them. One was Dr. G. Carl Huber, who was Dean of the University of Michigan’s graduate school when Magnificent Obsession came out, but for many years before that was a respected faculty member at the medical school, well known for his work in neurosurgery. Carl Huber makes an appearance in Chapter 8 of Magnificent Obsession. Bobby Merrick, who is going through medical training, gushes about his Anatomy professor, whom he calls “old Huber.” He tells Nancy Ashford:
“And old Huber’s a prince! He handles those poor cadavers as if they were our relatives. I’ll bet if some of them had been given as much tender consideration while alive as Huber gives them in the lab, they might have lived longer… Buries their ashes, Huber does, at the end of the semester… conventional interment – bell, book and clergy… Contends that these paupers and idiots and criminals, however much they may have burdened their communities while they lived, have so completely discharged their obligation to society by their service in the lab, that they deserve honorable burial… A fine old boy is Huber, believe me!”
Douglas sent a copy of the novel to Huber and received the following letter back, dated November 11, 1929:
“My dear Dr. Douglas:
“Thank you very sincerely for the copy of your novel, Magnificent Obsession. The book came to the laboratory and was taken to the house and read by Mrs. Huber before I had a chance to really see it. She, and other members of the family, pointed with real pride to a certain page on which you referred to me. It is nice of you to think of me in this way, and although I have a recollection that I once stated that you might refer to the incident if you did not use my name, that was long ago, and I will pretend that I have forgotten, as I see you did forget. I am taking the spirit of it as sincere.
“I enjoyed the book as a whole very much. I found it quite worthwhile reading. Your characters are not all creatures of the imagination – I have met them, and all have interest. The entire novel is worked out very nicely, and I enjoyed it more knowing its author and having recognition of his worth.”
That last paragraph is especially interesting, since it tells us that other characters besides Dr. Huber were based on real people at the University of Michigan Medical School.
Incidentally, Douglas mentioned Dr. Huber in an article in the Akron Times-Press. After briefly describing the passage in the book about him, Douglas said, “I had a letter from him the other day. He said he was surprised to find himself in a novel he was reading without a thought that the story had any relation to him. That would be a funny sensation, wouldn’t it?” I gather, instead, that Dr. Huber was a bit chagrined at seeing his name in a novel when he had probably just expected Douglas to use the incident in a sermon sometime.
At any rate, the medical connection helped boost sales of the book, not only because doctors and other health professionals became interested in it, but also because the general public liked such stories. As a reviewer in the Chicago Herald Examiner wrote, “Its story has many reasons for general appeal.” The first reason he gives is this: “It concerns the always fascinating atmosphere of medicine and surgery.”
But there is a more specific way in which the medical aspect helped generate interest in the book: in the novel, Merrick achieves a technological breakthrough in brain surgery that was actually occurring in real life at that time. I’ll tell you more about that in my next post.
The Lloyd C Douglas Page 