An old literary flame

Fifty years ago this week a press conference was held announcing the discovery of the polio vaccine. The press conference was held here in Ann Arbor, and the anniversary is getting a lot of attention in our local paper. An article I read in yesterday's paper about Doctors Salk and Francis reminded me of a novel I adored as a teenager: Arrowsmith, by Sinclair Lewis. It's a very romantic story of an idealistic young doctor who works in various different settings, getting progressively more and more jaded, until finally he chucks everything and decides to follow his heart and his ideals. He ends up living in a little shack in the woods (or something) doing "pure" research. Despite the book being sexist, and full of slang like "keen!" and "swell!", teenage Bookworm fell head-over-heels for Martin Arrowsmith. Frankly, I think the story of the polio vaccine is quite romantic, too.