Volume 30, Number 12 · July 21, 1983
Calling Dr. Thomas
By Stephen Jay Gould
The Youngest Science: Notes of a Medicine-Watcher
by Lewis Thomas
Viking, 270 pp., $14.75
Lewis Thomas's autobiography is, in many good ways, a deceptive book. Its two parts read, superficially, like a reverie, full of cozy nostalgia celebrating a life well lived. The first section describes his father's career as a general practitioner in Flushing, New York City—my old stomping grounds when I was a boy, and well remembered as densely urbanized in the late 1940s, but virtually a rural village during Thomas's youth. We read of horse-drawn carriages, home visits, endless concern, and little pecuniary reward. The second section treats Thomas's adult career as a doctor and medical administrator. He transmits an overwhelming impression of the fun that research can be, and he even manages to intimate that administration can be more rewarding, even more amusing, than frustrating—a proposition that I find hard to believe.
Review, 2427 words
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