|
Famous Medical Detective Writer is Dead at 83, April 28, 1994
(1 of 2)
Berton Roueche,
a staff writer for the New Yorker magazine and author of “Eleven
Blue Men” and other famous short stories about epidemiologic
investigations, died in April. Reprinted below are excerpts from
obituaries that appeared in the New York Times and in the New
Yorker. Next month, we will publish an appreciation of Roueche’s
work by Phil Brachman, former head of the CDC EIS
program for many years, along with a complete list of Roueche’s
books.
The New Yorker
When Berton Roueche died, at
the end of April, he had been writing for the New Yorker for
almost fifty years. He was born in Kansas City in 1911, and worked
as a newspaperman there and in St. Louis before joining the
magazine in 1944. A year later, he began a series of sparkling
pieces about people who were left over from the nineteenth
century—rural people who made maple syrup or grew potatoes. Then,
possibly because his grandfather had been a doctor and he himself
had had polio, he wrote his first medical piece. It dealt with the
discovery of a hitherto unknown disease, rickettsialpox fever and
he wrote it as a tale of suspense. Reports on gout and sodium
nitrite poisoning followed, and the flow continued until 1991...
Roueche’s medical pieces
became doubly famous: lay readers found them scary and exciting,
while doctors, impressed by their learning and clarity, used them
as medical texts. William Shawn once wrote about
his style, or non-style, “Certainly his is the art that conceals
art. His words are so plain, his sentences so chaste, his rhythms
so natural that one can overlook the presence of the writer and
see straight through to the matter at hand.”
Roueche was handsome,
courtly, outgoing, and a lover of anecdotes. He wore Brooks
Brothers clothes when he came to New York from Amagansett, where
he lived for forty-five years, but he considered shined shoes an
affectation. A kind of urbane country boy, he liked nothing better
than gleaning new potatoes, then closing things down with a couple
of Martinis and a glass of wine. (He was scrupulously cared for by
his wife of nearly sixty years, Katherine Eisenhower—a
niece of Ike’s—and they had a son, Bradford.)
The New York Times,
April 29
Berton Roueche, a staff
writer at The New Yorker for nearly 50 years who originated the
Annals of Medicine series that chronicled the war against disease
in elegant narratives of medical intrigue and detection, died
yesterday at his home in Amagansett, L.I. He was 83 years old.
He committed suicide, said
his wife, Katherine Eisenhower Roueche, who discovered the body...
Mrs. Roueche said her husband had emphysema for five years and had
been depressed after he was discharged from treatment for the
ailment at Southampton Hospital on Wednesday...
In an appreciation of Mr.
Roueche’s work, Lawrence K. Altman of the New York Times wrote:
“For many students, collections of his pieces have become
unofficial textbooks of epidemiology and sometimes required
reading. Occasionally, questions on medical examinations have been
based on his articles.” He added: “Many doctors may have learned
as much about epidemiology from Mr. Roueche as from their medical
school professors.”
Mr. Roueche once said in an
interview: “My annals of medical detection are often said to
resemble the classic detective story. Actually, the classic
detective story owes its nature to medicine.” He explained that
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle derived Sherlock Holmes’ method from an
Edinburgh diagnostician, Dr. Joseph Ball.
Published
October 1994
More on Berton
Roueche: Comments by the Former Head of the Epidemic Intelligence
Service at CDC (2 of 2)
Berton Roueche, a medical
writer emulated by many but duplicated by none, died at 83 years
of age on April 28, 1994. Mr. Roueche, known for his Annals of
Medicine narratives in the New Yorker magazine in which he
accurately reported epidemiologic investigations of diseases as
conducted by health professionals, was the epidemiological
chronicler supreme. His literary style was unique in its clarity,
accuracy, and weaving of the facts into an informative tale of
epidemiologic intrigue. Materials for his stories were obtained by
personal interviews with the investigators initially in the New
York City health department but then elsewhere expanding to
personnel throughout the entire country as identified by
investigations initiated by the CDC. His “medical detective”
stories were entertaining to the lay public and educational to the
medical profession. They frequently were used in epidemiology
classes throughout the world. These stories were collected into
various volumes and published.
Mr. Roueche was born and
grew up in Kansas. After receiving his journalism degree from the
University of Missouri, he was a reporter for newspapers in Kansas
City and St. Louis before joining the staff of the New Yorker in
1944. Initially, he was a staff writer working on general articles
as well as writing some fiction articles. Because of his interest
in medicine (at one time he considered becoming a doctor) he
initiated the Annals of Medicine series in 1946, which primarily
consisted of his articles dealing with epidemiologic studies.
These articles and other fiction and non-fiction articles
continued to appear in the New Yorker until 1991 when his last
article dealing with aplastic anemia was published.
He received various awards
from literary and medical societies. He was the first honorary
member of the American Epidemiological Society. His contributions
to epidemiology are unique and thanks to the publication of many
of his narratives in books, he will continue to impact on the
training of epidemiologists and other scientists and on the
enlightenment of all people.
(Philip S.
Brachman, Emory University)
Following is a
list of Roueche’s works as we have been able to piece it together
from various sources, including his family and literary agent.
A Man Named
Hoffman
Annals of
Epidemiology - Non-fiction.
Annals of
Medicine
Black Weather,
Described by the New York Times as a novel of “baleful magic,” it
is set in a mildewed and scary rooming house, with a landlady
straight out of Edgar Allan Poe and a young couple up to their
eyebrows in trouble as victims--ordinary people caught up in a
vortex of perverse circumstances. Fiction.
Curiosities of
Medicine, Edited by Berton Roueche. An assembly of medical
diversions, 1552 - 1962. One piece by Mr. Roueche. Historical
pieces, with a bent toward medical detective-work, mostly physical
but sometimes psychological; some “modern” pieces shed light on
what could not be understood in its own time. Nonfiction.
Desert and
Plain, The Mountains and the River, A celebration of rural
America. Four pieces by Berton Roueche; photographs by David
Plowden. A rural America that is lost to most of us, and, for
many, more foreign than Portugal or Greece. Non-fiction.
Eleven Blue Men
Fago, All the
elements that make for a good thriller: murder, suspense, greed.
Get a victim who in height, weight, general physical outline
resembles the killer. Set up in advance a medical history for the
killer that indicates suicidal tendencies. Have a cooperative
wife, who really dreamed up the whole scheme to begin with... A
novel of psychological suspense. Fiction.
Field Guide to
Disease, A handbook for world travelers. Twenty-seven diseases
explained in alphabetical order from Amebiasis to Yellow Fever;
another section lists diseases by country and continent. The book
describes disease symp- toms, course, diagnosis, treatment and
most important of all, how they can be avoided. Non-fiction.
Feral, This is
a frightening thriller about what happens when one segment of the
animal kingdom pits itself against man. To the young couple, the
old house in Amagansett, Long Island, is a dream come true. But
the dream becomes a nightmare as they and their neighbors find
themselves prisoners as one man’s thoughtlessness toward
“throwaway pets” turns lethal as bands of cats revert to the wild.
Fiction.
Sea to Shining
Sea, People, travels, places. Wake up in frozen North Dakota on a
cross-country winter Amtrak trip, accompany the lone doctor in Jal,
New Mexico, on his country hospital rounds, and elsewhere in the
United States, and take journeys in Europe from Copenhagen to
Italy. Various essays appear in one or more books. Nonfiction.
Special Places:
In Search of Small Town America, Describes with significant detail
the physical setting, the citizenry, their lifestyles, of seven
small towns in America’s heartland. One town is Hope, Arkansas,
birthplace of Bill Clinton. Non-fiction.
The Delectable
Mountains, Visits to a whaler, a whaler’s church, two glassmakers,
the revived Hitchcock chair factory, to a tiny shaker community in
upper New York State, and more.
The Greener
Grass, The story of a New York City cigar roller and ten stories
set elsewhere: how people raise potatoes and ducks and herbs, how
they breed donkeys and oxen, how they run a mink farm and how they
make wine in the Hudson Valley. Non-fiction.
The Incurable
Wound, Five additional medical mystery pieces, including “Ten Feet
Tall,” a piece on cortisone which was made into the movie “Bigger
Than Life.” Non-fiction.
The Last Enemy,
The story of a man suspected of murder, never arrested but never
officially cleared, and his life under the burden of suspicion.
Set in the 1930’s, the book has a neat twist. Fiction.
The Medical
Detectives, A compilation of twenty-two pieces originally
published in the New Yorker magazine under Annals of Medicine,
dealing with mysterious and difficult to diagnose medical
conditions. Non-fiction.
The Medical
Detectives II, An additional twenty-two pieces. Non-fiction.
The Neutral
Spirit, A searching study of alcohol: its nature, its history and
the ageless problems it has presented to man since man stumbled
upon a natural phenomenon, which like fire, he gratefully bent to
his use. Non-fiction.
The Orange Man
The River World
and Other Explorations, A variety of people and places, from
Alaska to the Snake River Valley of Idaho to McDowell County, West
Virginia. Pieces as well on the apple, garlic and bananas.
Non-fiction.
What’s Left,
The unifying theme of these eight essays is conversation. Often
accompanied by guides from the National Park Service, he visits
the Chesapeake and Ohio Towpath, the Current River in the Ozarks
of southeastern Missouri, the Islandia Keys in Biscayne Bay,
Florida, to a rice harvest on the Chippewa Indian Reservation in
northwestern Minnesota, and others.
Published November 1994
|
