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Cheap? Tawdry? Exploitive? |
| Section: BOOK WORLD / REVIEWS |
| Author: Curt Schleir |
| Publication:
The World & I Online |
| Issue Date: 4/1/1990 |
| Size: 2,737 Words, 15,208 Characters |
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M.D.
One Doctor's Adventures Among the Famous and the Infamous
From the Jungles of Panama to a Park Avenue Practice
B.H. Kean, M.D., with Tracy Dahlby
New York: Ballantine Books, 1990
480 pp., $19.95
According to the publicity material that accompanies M.D., author B.H. Kean "is a witty, charming practitioner, a medical detective whose specialty, tropical medicine, attracted to his office the rich, famous and infamous, who came home form their travels with more than they'd bargained for."
That might lead some to think M.D. is a cheap, tawdry, exploitive attempt by a vain physician to cash in on his patients' fame. So let's set the record straight: M.D. costs $19.95.
It definitely isn't cheap. As for tawdry and exploitive, well, you be the judge. Here's what he says about his patients:
"Once you've got them in an examining gown with a tongue depressor down their throat, they are usually ready to surrender stories that give new meaning to the phrase 'human condition.'"
He never explains how his patients manage to say anything with a piece of wood threatening their esophagus, but here is some of the stuff they apparently managed to get out:
"Willie had spent 10 days in Alaska on a fishing trip - or so his wife thought. In truth, he had been holed up all that time at the Waldorf with her sister. Mrs. T, married to an international playboy for 30 years and before that the girlfriend of many men-about-town, finally let me do a Pap. She was a virgin. Mr....
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...he Shah been allowed to return to New York Hospital from Lackland Air Force Base or even Panama," Kean charges, "the story certainly would have been different. A quick removal of his spleen uncomplicated by political entanglements, might even have saved his life; certainly it would have lengthened it." While this is fascinating, the rest of the book doesn't even make good bathroom reading.
(1,572 of 15,208 characters)
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Publication Details
(The World & I Online) |
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The World & I Online is a
comprehensive academic resource that encompasses a broad range of
articles by scholars and experts in the areas of Global Studies,
Liberal Arts, Fine & Applied Arts, General Science, and Spanish.
Originally published monthly in print as The World & I, our site
includes the complete contents since 1986 and continues to publish
a new issue online each month. |
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