The Medical Detectives: The Classic Collection of Award-Winning Medical Investigative Reporting (Truman Talley)

If you enjoy figuring out the disease based on the sequential appearance of symptoms, be aware that herein lie spoilers.It's a collection of 25 essays first published mostly in the 1950s and 1960s culled from the pages of The New Yorker. Each is written in plain language and accessible to the non-specialist and to lay people who aren't busy watching "World's Wildest Police Videos." Roueche was a good writer -- good in the sense of putting down clear prose and good in the sense of packing it with suspense. Here's his opening to one of the chapters, "A Man Named Hoffman.""Around ten o'clock in the morning of Wednesday, March 4, 1964, a man named Donald Hoffman presented himself for treatment at the Student Health Clinic of Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, some thirty miles northwest of Cincinnati. Hoffman was thirty-six years old, married, and a residentof Cincinnati, but, as he explained to the receptionist, he was currently employed as an insulation installer, in Oxford . . . and his company had an arrangement with the clinic. He was here, he added, because he foreman had sent him. That was the only reason. His trouble was nothing -- an itchy sore on the side of his neck. He had probably picked up a sliver of glass-wool fiber. It had happened several times before. It was a common complaint in his trade."First, note the precision of the presentation and the detail Roueche gives us. We even know the time of day that Hoffman showed up at the clinic. This is authoritative stuff. It sounds like The Voice of God narrators in one of those post-war docudramas about Nazis and gangsters that were paeans to J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI. Or maybe "Dragnet." "It was four o'clock in the afternoon, Wednesday, March 4th. We were working the bunko squad out of Littering. It was hot in Los Angeles."Second, okay, the poor guy has an itchy sore on his neck, maybe from glass-wool fiber, right? Wrong. After a lengthy examination of Hoffman, his place of work, the materials he schleps around, it turns out that he has ANTHRAX -- a rare disease of goats! Most of the chapters are rather like detective stories. The patient presents with symptoms that are only slightly odd but turn out to be much odder than they seem.I read some of the later stories when they first appeared in The New Yorker and was enthralled, informed, and sometimes amused by them. My favorite is "The Orange Man." The patient shows up at his family doctor's office and is a bright pumpkin-orange -- but he doesn't realize it. His complaint is a stomach ache! His wife has never noticed the change either. Further, there is no disorder that turns the skin a bright orange. (The man, as it develops, has two simultaneous disorders, one that turns you red and one that turns you yellow.)It's an enjoyable and educational collection. And let me put it this way. If you like Agatha Christie, you ought to like "The Medical Detectives."

Gentle, lovely, scary. An acquired taste for readers who later grew into gobblers of blood, gore, and zombies. When a Berton Roueche medical investigation appeared in The New Yorker of old, it was an event. Roueche was the fore-runner to at least twenty very fine writers now doing the same thing: breaking into the genetic vault to try to understand how we catch diseases,what we can do about not catching them, and learning how to recognize them These narratives read today seem comfortable and natural, as indeed they were on publication. Roueche may have been one of the earlier writers to find and identify and stick to a niche. As friends in Easthampton in the 60s, there was nothing eerie or Charles Addams-ish about Berton or his lovely wife Kay. But they were quietly and seriously curious about medicine and could go underground for lengthy periods of time to scope out what they might have suspected. And we,as readers, were nine times out ten fascinated by what had been unearthed. This, readers, is a "source" of much that followed that has proven not only gripping but also seminal. It's a treat.John Neufeld,author ofLisa, Bright and Dark (Kindle) and Edgar Allan (also Kindle-d)

Fascinating collection of stories about illnesses and epidemics and how health officials went about getting to the root of the problem. How they eliminate possible causes -- their techniques and deductive reasoning -- makes for an interesting read. The explanations are not dumbed down, nor are they overly complex. Real people are introduced and make the stories personal.

I found out about this book in a strange way. Jon Bentley, in his now classic, "Programming Pearls", suggests or rather avers programmers to read Berton Roueche's stories to improve creativity and debugging skills. I immediately bought this book. Real gems, these stories. Whether it has improved my problem-solving or programming skills remains to be seen, but it has been an awesome read. Like most reviews mention, the style he employs is rivetting. Lot of medical details, atleast from an engineer's viewpoint, but camouflaged in his terrific narration. I began admiring every investigator the book mentions - their enthusiasm for the work which effuses in Berton's words is heart-warming. Many cases seemed easy to solve but only in retrospect like always. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in medical investigation and their methods, and of course, to improve problem-solving abilities :-)

I read this author’s series of books starting with The Orange Man back when I was in high school. They are all wonderful and a rare find when you come across them.

If you like well-written thoughtful detective genre tales or stories with a 'noir-ish' ring to them, then don't pass up this book. Written as extended case histories with the punchlines coming unexpectedly at the end of piece of descriptive narrative. The tales' fascinating dissections of the normal and banal, hold the readers attention by and large. The prose is reminiscent of Carver's style. Spare in words but exquisitely wrought in effect. Each tale is retold to the reader as it had been told to the author. The result is that the shocks and jotls that the suthor experienced are equally communicated to the reader. It is an interesting and arresting style aided by the considerable detailed and often alarming case histories. For a good old faashioned read - I'd recommend this book.

I found this book while teaching epidemiology (population medicine) and used these stories to demonstrate how where and what had to be done differently from one on medicine. Stories are 1950-1960 and it is fun to see difference in history and attitudes.

A surprisingly flimsy/floppy paperback. My original copy, from the 1990s, was much better quality. The covers of this new copy curl instantly unless pinned between other books. Still, it's fine for re-reading some of my favourite chapters of this intriguing and entertaining book.

Love this book a must for true crime fans

Perfect

Ce livre est recommandé par J. Bentley dans 'Programming Pearls', par les analogies qu'il trouve entre le raisonnement des médecins confrontés à une épidémie et celui des programmeurs qui déboguent leurs programmes. Il s'agit d'un recueil d'articles de la rubrique médicale du New Yorker parus entre 1944 et 1987. Au-delà d'un tableau de l'Amérique de cette période, les énigmes sont passionnantes et le livre a l'attrait d'un roman policier (il a très certainement inspiré plusieurs séries TV). Accessible à mon avis avec un niveau B1 en anglais.