Arrowsmith

I hadn't read Arrowsmith in nearly 30 years, and I'd forgotten a lot of it. I remembered his two marriages, his near-worship of the bacteriologist Gottlieb, his use of phage in a plague epidemic, and his eventual retreat to a cabin (lab) in the woods. I'd forgotten (among other things), his accidental engagement, his off-and-on rivalry with a classmate, and the charismatic epidemiologist who pushed Gottlieb off his pedestal. Like Elmer Gantry, it wanders the protagonist's life, although the reactive isn't quite as memorable as the magnetic con artist. The book I read is more complex than the book I remembered. Martin Arrowsmith is less competent than I remembered, and his forays in to small-town practice, public health, and hospital staff are mostly unsuccessful. They also provide Sinclair Lewis with an opportunity to skewer the snobbery hypocritical moralism of the early 20th Century with more humor than his other works. I was particularly drawn, though, to the scientific content. Lewis worked with microbiologist Paul de Kruif, and the discussions of lab work and practical applications of phage provided a nice epilogue to the immunology-heavy vaccines class I'd just completed.