Resumen
Resumen de Un doctor yanqui en el paraíso
Para quién es
Readers who love travel memoirs, island history, and true tales of medicine in far places. It suits anyone curious about the Pacific, tropical disease, missionaries, and the lively voice of an American abroad.
De qué trata este libro
A Yankee Doctor in Paradise is the memoir of S. M. Lambert, an American physician who spent twenty-one years fighting disease across the South Pacific for the Rockefeller Foundation. He wrote it near the end of his career, after retiring in 1939 because of failing eyesight. It follows him from a New York office, where he is told on short notice that he is going to Papua, through the islands of Melanesia, Polynesia and Micronesia.
You travel with him on whaleboats, horseback and luxury yachts. You meet cannibals, missionaries, witch doctors, planters, chiefs and a queen. You learn how hookworm, yaws, malaria and leprosy were fought, and how a bottle of cleaning fluid changed a campaign. Lambert tells his stories with a joker's ear and a doctor's eye for what makes whole peoples sick.
The book is also an argument. Lambert holds that island peoples die out mainly from diseases brought by visitors, and that trained islanders can turn the tide. His own journey begins in a small office at 61 Broadway, where he has to look up Papua in an atlas.
En este resumen
- 1A tanner's son is sent to PapuaFree
- 2Hookworm and a campaign for privies
- 3Ghosts, planters and mountain trails in Papua
- 4A month with the Fathers of the Sacred Heart
- 5Pidgin, cannibal patients and the Sepik
- 6A cleaning fluid saves the campaign
- 7Sorcery, curses and the scattered islands
- 8The Central Medical School at last
- 9Rennell Island and the fate of a people
Idea clave 1 de 9
A tanner's son is sent to Papua
Lambert opens in 1918 in the New York office of Victor Heiser, the Rockefeller Foundation's Director of the East. Heiser announces that Lambert is going to Papua as if it were across the street. Lambert has to look it up in an atlas. He knows only vague talk of palm islands and cannibals who ask guests how they like their missionary.
He then tells how he got there. He was born in Ellenville, New York, and raised in Little Falls, the son of a tanner who paid for his schooling. He studied at Hamilton College and then at Syracuse Medical, where his eyes began to fail. He once crammed a few pages of an ophthalmology text so well that his professor suspected cheating, and the strain made his eyes worse.
At this time he also met Eloisa Tays, the daughter of a mining engineer in Mexico. She told him to finish his degree and come back when he had a practice. He did, and she waited five years. Her name stays at the center of the whole story.
His early years in Mexico and Costa Rica are packed into a few pages. He treats smallpox, amputates on kitchen tables, and is once jailed by an officer's followers after a patient dies. He is freed when the American consul and a navy cruiser captain make the case an international matter. Lambert says he tells all this so readers can judge how ready he was for the tropics. He is not sure himself.
The tone is set here. The author is self-mocking, shrewd, and fond of a good tale. He is a large man who knows how little he knows about the place he is bound for, and that humility serves him well.
Heiser sends him first to North Queensland, where a hookworm campaign is under way. That stop lasts a year and a half and nearly kills him. He is struck by the same intestinal illness that has already worn down his predecessor, Dr. Waite.
That’s 1 of 9 key points.
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Questions about Un doctor yanqui en el paraíso
What is A Yankee Doctor in Paradise about?
It is the memoir of S. M. Lambert, an American doctor who spent twenty-one years fighting hookworm, yaws, malaria and leprosy across the South Pacific for the Rockefeller Foundation, and who helped create a medical school for islanders.
Who was Dr. S. M. Lambert?
Sylvester Lambert was an American physician who worked in Mexico and Costa Rica before joining the Rockefeller Foundation. He led health campaigns in Papua, New Guinea, Fiji and other groups, then retired in 1939 because of failing eyesight.
What is the Central Medical School in the book?
It is a school in Suva, Fiji, that trained islanders as Native Medical Practitioners. Lambert pushed for it for years. It opened in 1929 with students from Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, the Cooks, the Solomons and the New Hebrides.
What is the story of Rennell Island in the book?
Rennell is a remote island whose people lived almost untouched by outsiders. Lambert visits in 1930 and 1933, admires their gentle religion and health, and warns that trade and missions will bring disease. Later reports bear him out.
Is A Yankee Doctor in Paradise a true story, and is it easy to read?
It is a true memoir told in a lively, joking voice, with short scenes and many anecdotes. Lambert explains medical points in plain terms, so readers need no medical training to follow the stories and the arguments.