As most of you know, I am beginning to work on my second book (lol), which will be a history of doctors' wives in America. One of the big reasons I'm doing this is to use marriage as a lens for understanding changes in the social/cultural authority of medicine over time...
So I've decided that it is necessary for me to read as many medical romance novels as physically possible. In theory, if I read enough of them and from a large enough chronological scope, this will allow me to track *something* about perceptions of the profession over time.
I've mostly been doing archival stuff so far & haven't quite gotten into the "reading trashy fiction" part of the ~cultural history~ of this project. (Except for when my fave historian of nursing, @almhxrn, and I read the amazing collection of short stories, Medical Center)...
Good question. Untold numbers of medical romance novels. Hundreds, thousands, who knows. But it is my solemn duty to find out. https://twitter.com/jaivirdi/status/1199369897903570944
Today I’m starting the amazingly titled “Woman-Hating Surgeon,” by Jerry James (1965). [Please note my excellent Susan Lederer Garrison Lecturer AAHM 2016 pen.]

I have no idea what kind of systematic note taking system I’ll develop, but I think I’ll live tweet this first one.
This is the first page, providing what I assume is a tantalizing excerpt of the adventures to come. Personally I am excited for the “front view” moment of a seductive physical. But more importantly, I know I’ll be on the look-out for “persuasion” as a key theme here.
Chapter 1 introduces us to Duff Shane, who wears a "casual jacket and slacks" with a "tan topcoat" slung over his arm. He looks "more like a pro athlete or husky ambulance driver than the up-and-coming young surgeon he actually was." He works at Gotham General.
I rate Gotham General a B+ in terms of fake hospital names.
Already picking up some real scumbag vibes from Dr. Shane. Who is, by the way, very masculine and super attractive to all the ladies. Note esp the description of a group of nurses as his “harem.”
He has ulterior motives in attempting to marry Kay Farber

"Kay had money in her own right, quite a bit of it, maybe a million dollars... And the other thing was Max Farber [NB: his boss]. Max, with his important name in surgical circles and his plush-plush practice on Park Ave."
This choice of surname no doubt inspired by and meant to be reminiscent of the well-known Sidney Farber:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_Farber
On his way to meet Kay, Shane bumps into an old acquaintance in the elevator: Miss Clancy Delaney O'Mara (who he uncreatively nicknamed "Irish"), once a USO singer he knew back in Korea, now a very professional nurse. He notes happily that "her breasts were still firm and proud."
I think it's interesting that these authors always give the main hospital where the characters work some dumb name, like "Gotham General" but the background scenery of NYC gets to be the same. This new nurse lady, for ex, trained at Bellevue. So you know she's legit, I guess.
GASP now she’s going to be working WITH him, as a sort of equal—well, insofar as doctors and nurses can ever be seen as equal in this time/setting. She’s good. Probably too good. He’ll obviously have to sleep with her out of professional frustration.
I keep getting interrupted in my tweeting by the demands of an elderly Jack Russell-pug mix, but I will note that while Irish has aquamarine eyes, Kay, the spoiled doctor's daughter, has eyes described this way:

"Her dark eyes gleamed at him through the stormy half darkness."
By 1965 the demands of long, intense hours in the hospital on MDs (esp surgeons) would have been a well known cultural trope. Also a convenient excuse to use when you’re late for your date, who you might actually want to hit. Yay casual references to intimate partner violence!
It is VERY clear that this character intends to “marry up” to this rich surgeon’s daughter purely for economic and professional gain. No mystery here at all.
I predict that by the end, they will have broken up, he will have proposed to the nurse instead, and he will give up his position in fancy Gotham General to go be a family doctor in some small town with his nurse-wife to work alongside him. I hope I’m wrong bc that’s boring af.
More cause for possible concern re: her eye health:

"By some strange telepathy, her gleaming dark eyes sent a high frequency signal across the table to him that started a familiar but ever thrilling tingle along his spine and in his loins." https://twitter.com/cjdenial/status/1199393508622254081
Some further explicit discussion of the need to be well connected in high society to get the kind of prestigious medical career he wants. And recognition of women as key players in that game. Interestingly both characters are very consciously aware of this type of ploy.
Readers would recognize the downsides to being a doctor's wife as well as the upsides:

"The wife of a doctor could never plan ahead-for the opera, a party, or anything. At the last moment, the damn phone would ring, and the doctor-husband would go rushing off for some...
"...emergency case. And the long hours of nerve-wracking work took so much of his energy that on the few nights he did have free, he was too drained and tired to be any kind of a lover. Her mother had given up hope of having any kind of satisfactory love life...
"...and now she spent her time gadding around to clubs and playing bridge. Oh, it was a hell of a life!"

These constraints were definitely not new, but I suspect in the postwar U.S. alongside changes in practice (more hospital based), ^ specialization, etc, they were v amplified
Which is to say: no surprise, Kay rejects his proposal.
Eye health watch continues:

"the black pupils of her eyes were so dilated that they gave her vivid, almost gaunt face the hypnotic look of a sleepwalker." 👀
"I'm a woman who needs a lot of loving... But you ARE a surgeon, and headed for high places. And being Max Farber's daughter I KNOW you'll get more & more wrapped up in your work. Damnit I almost wish you weren't so good in bed!"

Watch me quote that one day in a talk. Just wait.
Dr. Shane and Clancy/Irish's mutual friend from back in Korea, rich oilman Tex Gallagher, has been injured and demands that Duff fly out to perform his surgery. Surprise, surprise - Clancy insists that she accompany him as his surgical nurse.
I think judging my the flashbacks he is having on the plane, thinking back to events in Korea and how she tended him back to health like some nurse angel, we are supposed to think Clancy/Irish is a much better match than Kay.
But guys I am 100% #TeamKay because she is like: no thanks I don't want a loveless marriage, I just want to enjoy my freedom as a wealthy divorcee and casually sleep with hotties. I don't need no man to leech off me and my connections thanks. No scrub, surgical or otherwise.
Wait why are they flying to *Montreal*? I guess their wealthy oil friend is Canadian???
Some insight into how our protagonist views women (he is a woman-hating surgeon, after all):

"Three things a woman wanted in this life: to be physically attractive, to obtain gratification of her sexual desires--and to have security, money."
I laughed too hard at this line:

"And, by the oath of Hippocrates, he'd pull Tex through, here, with a bit of luck and maybe some help from the Almighty and from Clancy O'Mara."
And we’re back to Woman-Hating Surgeon, where this woman-hating surgery is getting underway. You know it’s serious business when he tells one nurse to “jump to it,” and then orders another to go quickly obtain a laundry list of very technical sounding instruments.
Perhaps predictably, Tex asks if, after his surgery, he will be healed enough to "play big bad wolf in some gal's bed" again.

Duff Shane, MD, jokes that he may castrate him instead.

Bro-side manner.
"Dr. Duffrey Shane knew a world of surgical technique, a lot about medicine in general. But about women-about a real woman, like Clancy-he knew not a damned thing."

1) obviously
2) Duffrey???
So he performs the surgery but it was magically very minimally invasive and didn't require any fancy tools like the Dacron bc Duff used his Dr. House-like powers of deduction to figure out that it was just syphilis??? the whole time??? I'll consult med friends later but moving on
"He took a quick look at the vertebra and came to a quick decision. 'No sign of fracture. I think I'll try a little chiropractic.'"

WHAT A MAVERICK PHYSICIAN
But just as he’s taking a victory lap after Tex’s wildly successful operation, bad news from New York. Kay, the woman he still hopes to marry for her money and connections, has been in an accident.

Duff is like lol predictable, typical Kay, loses the booze 🍸
(obviously I meant "loves")
At the airport Duff encounters "a Canadian official who recognized him," who says, "I say, old chap, aren't you Captain Shane?"

Much further down the page, the man is then described as "the British-now Canadian-officer"
I like to think that this was an editor's addition and the author just has absolutely no idea how Canadians sound
Ok my prediction is going to be correct because this dialogue just occurred b/t Clancy and Duff on the way to save Kay:

"You've got a gift for straight medicine as well as for surgery. With the right woman... you might even have a gift for making a pretty fair husband."
Romance confirmed: They just had a dramatic plane crash on the way back from Montreal. Near-death experiences = guaranteed bonding.

What I don't get though is that Duff was apparently flying this plane the whole time and I had no idea???
"Don't cry darling. Do you hurt anywhere? Anywhere at all?"

"Just in my heart, Duff. It hurts because I'm so thankful you're not dead. Oh, Duff!"

🤮🤮🤮🤮
They are now stranded waiting for a rescue helicopter. Duff has adventured out into the snow and gotten his clothing all wet. They both agree that they need to get warm, and have no fire... Hmm...
Before they can, ahem, get warm, of course, we must first reflect on Duff’s plan for professional advancement and hear the wise nurse’s critique of his approach and be reminded of his wasted true potential:
"fall into a ready-made Park Avenue practice where you'll prescribe sugar pills for rich women who just love to feel your hands on them"

Jesus, what a scathing indictment of modern/urban medical practice
Ok there's like 5 solid pages of exposition about how Duff shouldn't sell out and should be a more idealistic, community-centered old style physician, before they finally get it on.
WAIT hold up. Kay *actually* had a botched abortion???

"'Why'd you send for me?'
'Because it's all your damn fault!' The older surgeon's voice was vibrant with righteous wrath. 'Ever since it happened, Kay's been bleeding, from the uterus...
'Not any hemorrhage, but she's losing enough blood to pull her down pretty fast. Duff, we can't stop the bleeding!"
I think it's an abortion rather than a miscarriage bc on the way in a journalist confronted Duff saying,

"I have it from a reliable source that your fiancee, Miss Farber has had an---" (then convenient cut off)

"an" would imply something about the first letter...
So obviously to protect his daughter's reputation, Dr. Farber wants Duff and Kay to get married RIGHT away. Kay, we know, has repeatedly said that she does not want to get married again, especially not to a doctor. Hence her desire to not be pregnant.
Plot twist-twist: It wasn't Duff Shane's
Ok so maybe she didn't seek it out after all and it was really just a spontaneous abortion in the miscarriage sense?? They keep going back and forth about the need to operate on her fallopian tube in a very confused way. Female anatomy: how does it work?
PLOT TWIST number I've lost count: Dr. Max Farber, Kay's father and Duff's boss, stabbed to death through the heart.
I guess he's not dead yet because now our protagonist is dramatically racing to the OR. The husband of Max's mistress (obviously a nurse) caught them.
Duff saves the patient, yet again, and his nurse praises him, yet again:

"Under the shower, his keyed-up mind flicked back to the operating room, and that final choked outburst from Clancy: 'Oh, Duff, you were wonderful!' Wonderful simply as a surgeon... or wonderful as a man?"
This would have been far more interesting as a murder-mystery interlude rather than another opportunity to prove what an awesome surgeon this guy is. What is the male equivalent of a Mary Sue?
Blah blah blah comical miscommunications about whether Duff intends to marry Kay, Clancy getting all angry, typical almost-at-the-end romance plot points
Somehow in all the discussion of the miscarriage/abortion situation, I missed the fact that Tex has been transferred by plane from Montreal and now is a potential romantic rival for Clancy's affections
Nah apparently Tex wouldn't do that to his old pal. He's like let me sit you down and explain that Clancy actually loves you and you two should be together. What a bro.
What we’ve been waiting for: the confession of love and another “take me now” moment. And some bizarre racial commentary to go with it.
Uh oh. Enter modern bioethics, stage right:

"Dr. Shane... a serious charge has been brought against you. You operated on a patient without her or her father's consent."
Now it's a legit trial before a judge, with an opposing doctor leaping from his chair and calling his clinical behavior an "outrage!"
They’re trying to get Duff stripped of his license and removed from Gotham General. Good old Tex steps forward as a colorful character witness. I include the entire page for ridiculousness.
"Listen to me, you lecherous old cuss," he continues with one page left to go in the book, "Duff Shane is more man than you'll ever be..."
Aaaand Duff, although vindicated by this defense of his moral character, decides to say fuck Gotham General and moves to Texas, where Tex (obviously) owns his own small hospital. With Clancy as his nurse. And wife.
Now that we’ve reached the end, has our woman-hating surgeon redeemed himself? No, he still thinks all women are trash. Just not this one.
THE END.

Thanks for reading along with me. If you liked this, please consider going around your university telling anyone who will listen how cool #histmed is and how AWESOME it would be if you hired more historians of medicine.
You can follow @KellyODonn.
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