Blood, Sweat, and Cheers

Abstract

Reap a Destiny: Divagations of a Taoist,

by Douglas Swinscow (The Memoir Club), 334 pp, with illus, $29, London, England,British Medical Journal, 1989. Both volumes are a part of an effort by theBritish Medical Journalto preserve for posterity the memoirs of famed English physicians. Sir Ian Fraser is a veteran of World War II, former president of the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland and of the British Medical Association. His recollections are anecdotal, with restrained humor and much jargon from a bygone era, some of which is barely comprehensible. Current professionals may have difficulty identifying with a world in which direct transfusions were quantified for end point when the donor turned white and the recipient turned pink—but the politics of medicine will be entirely recognizable, having minimally changed. Dr Swinscow's book is more a true autobiography, showing clearly many of the tenuous threads, which, added together,