Bottoms Up!: A Pathologist's Essays on Medicine and the Humanities - Hardcover

Ober M.D., Dr. William B.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0809314193 ISBN 13: 9780809314195

Publisher: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987

Synopsis

The reader will note,” Dr. Ober explains, that psychopathology occupies a prominent place in these essays melancholia, masochism, hysteria, autoerotic asphyxia, and other dinner table topics.” The book opens with a brisk discussion of flagellation studded with rare illustrations. Like all of the essays in the book, this is an illuminating chapter, scholarly and good natured at the same time, and one that gives rise to speculation concerning human nature and human history.

Ober provides medical answers to many mysteries. In a discussion of infertility in the Bible, he speculates medically as to why Onan and his older brother Er died during coitus. In the eyes of the doctor, these biblical antiheros may deserve our pity, but not our scorn. He also explains the role of Reuben’s man­drakes in fertilizing the barren Rachel. Equally fascinating is his discussion of the mandrake, a wondrous weed and sire of legend and superstition.

 

Ober shows why an unfamiliar composer named František Koczwara got himself hanged in a London whorehouse. He tells of the aborted homosexual sadism in Robert Musil; the murder, madrigals, and masochism in the life of composer Carlo Gesualdo; the iconography of leprosy; the iconography of Fanny Hill (or how to illustrate a dirty book); the melancholia of Johnson and Boswell; the short, miserable life of Rimbaud; and other mysteries to which medicine may hold the key.

About this title

About the Author:

William B. Ober, M.D., began his career as pathologist at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in 1950. He is presently Director Emeritus, Department of Pathology, Hackensack Medical Center and Clinical Professor of Pathology, New Jersey Medical College. He is also Assistant Medical Examiner in Bergen County, New Jersey.

Review:

At a time when medical humanist’ has become something of a trendy label, it is comforting to find in Dr. Ober the real McCoy a master stylist who has things worth saying.” A. J. Vogel, editor of MD magazine

About this edition

• Publisher: Southern Illinois University Press
• Publication date: 1987
• ISBN 10: 0809314193
• ISBN 13: 9780809314195
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 360