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A doctor who would not go home and sit still
DISSECTING ROOM
Not the American national anthem? This Land is Your Land Words and music by Woody Guthrie. Paintings by Kathy Jakobsen. Boston: Little, Brown. 1998. $15·95. ISBN 0-316-39215-4. ll Americans who attempt “The Star Spangled Banner” suspect in privacy that it should be changed, and all non-Americans seem ready to agree. And I don’t feel unpatriotic saying that despite some heroic lyrics, its a pretty rough tune, melodically speaking, unsingable for the ordinary citizen, and even to the professional a threat to Poupart’s ligament. Many of us prefer more simple harmony and the humbly inspired, “This Land is Your Land”. “This Land is Your Land” was written by Woody Guthrie in 1940. Guthrie was born and raised in the dust bowl of depression-era Okemah, Oklahoma. The facts of his early years are filled with more family tragedy than the common, more mythic telling of his life would have it. His sister died in a fire that his mother was suspected of setting just before the symptoms of her Huntington’s disease became apparent, and after another fire injured his father, Woody was left to himself at age 15.
A
Shortly thereafter, Guthrie moved to Texas and began playing the guitar and writing songs. Soon he left for California, hopping freight trains and hitching rides along the way. His songs, considered subversive by some, supported the efforts of working people to organise and became part of American left-wing ceremony. Beyond the politics, however, is the deceptively simple lyric of a shrewd and observant
self-made and self-taught man who understood the reach of song. Guthrie wrote the song as a reaction to Irving Berlin’s wildly patriotic “God
A doctor who would not go home and sit still Elsie Inglis Leah Leneman. Edinburgh: NMS Publishing. 1998. Pp 94. £5·99. ISBN 1-901663-09-4. r Elsie Inglis’ death in 1917 was marked by a service at St Margaret’s, Westminster, conducted by the Bishop of Oxford and attended by distinguished representatives of the Allied Governments, the Red Cross Societies, and women’s societies. Her body lay in state in St Giles’ Cathedral, Edinburgh, and the Queen sent a letter of condolence to her sister. The Lancet devoted nearly a page to her obituary (1917; ii: 875). Honoured and revered in death, she was a remarkable woman whose story is worth the telling. Elsie Inglis, one of the first women to qualify in medicine in Scotland, started a hospital for women and children in Edinburgh, which survived until 1988 (now a ward in the Western General Hospital bears her name), and she was active in the women’s suffrage movement. But her finest achievement was her work for the Scottish Women’s Hospitals for Foreign Service during World War I. Her idea was to send to the seat of war hospital units staffed solely
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THE LANCET • Vol 352 • December 19/26, 1998
by women. She was rebuffed by the British War Office and by the Royal Army Medical Corps—with the words “My good lady, go home and sit still”. That, luckily, she did not do. Instead, the units were offered to the Allied governments, which were more receptive to medical women than the British. The result of her efforts was establishment of a large hospital in France by the first December of the war, followed by units in Serbia. Elsie Inglis arrived in Serbia early in 1915, and helped to fight the typhus epidemic raging in the army and civilian populations. She was soon operating on men—which had been impossible for a woman before the war. She was reknowned for her aseptic technique. She also fell in love with the Serbs, writing to her sister that they were “a very charming people, very like the Irish, in almost every way, but much better looking”. Elsie Inglis was to serve that (at the time) hapless country well. Later in 1915 the Serbs found themselves isolated in their fight against the
Bless America”. Despite its clear populism, the Guthrie tune was quickly sanitised and popularised and became a kind of national anthem. Sensing this, just before he died of Huntington’s in 1967, Guthrie carefully took his son (the folksinger Arlo) into their backyard to teach him the more pointed verses, the overtly leftist ones—the ones we never sang in school because they never made it into our grade-school song book: As I went walking, I saw a sign there, And on the sign it said "No Trespassing." But on the other side it didn't say nothing; That side was made for you and me. In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people; By the relief office I seen my people; As they stood hungry, I stood there asking, Is this land made for you and me?
This is a beautiful book. There is a tribute by Pete Seeger, who sang for years with Guthrie, and a short biography. But beyond these are the stunning illustrations. It is hard not to love them, and reading the lyrics alongside, remain unmoved by the feelings that caused them. Buy this book and give it to your children. It is a treasure that makes an heirloom of the song. David Frankel The Lancet, New York, USA
Germans, Austrians, and Bulgarians. Inglis did not desert her beloved Serbs; she remained with her badly wounded patients when evacuations took place, and was at one point taken prisoner. In 1916 she was decorated with the Order of the White Eagle by the Crown Prince of Serbia, the highest honour that country could bestow. On her return to Britain, Elsie Inglis wanted to set up a hospital in Mesopotamia, but once again the War Office was obstructive. She eventually went out to Rumania with a unit for the Serbian Division of the Russian army. Here too she experienced retreat before the invaders and all that that meant in terms of wounded soldiers and fleeing civilians. At last, she spent 4 weeks travelling back to England through Russia, which was in the throes of a revolution, only to die from cancer within a few hours of her return, on Nov 26, 1917. Elsie Inglis has been largely forgotten, according to Leah Leneman, her most recent biographer, and to a straw poll of Lancet editors, none of whom had heard of her. Let us hope that she is better remembered by Scottish graduates, as she doubtless is by the Serbs. Stephanie Clark The Lancet, London, UK
2031
Not the American national anthem? This Land is Your Land Words and music by Woody Guthrie. Paintings by Kathy Jakobsen. Boston: Little, Brown. 1998. $15·95. ISBN 0-316-39215-4. ll Americans who attempt “The Star Spangled Banner” suspect in privacy that it should be changed, and all non-Americans seem ready to agree. And I don’t feel unpatriotic saying that despite some heroic lyrics, its a pretty rough tune, melodically speaking, unsingable for the ordinary citizen, and even to the professional a threat to Poupart’s ligament. Many of us prefer more simple harmony and the humbly inspired, “This Land is Your Land”. “This Land is Your Land” was written by Woody Guthrie in 1940. Guthrie was born and raised in the dust bowl of depression-era Okemah, Oklahoma. The facts of his early years are filled with more family tragedy than the common, more mythic telling of his life would have it. His sister died in a fire that his mother was suspected of setting just before the symptoms of her Huntington’s disease became apparent, and after another fire injured his father, Woody was left to himself at age 15.
A
Shortly thereafter, Guthrie moved to Texas and began playing the guitar and writing songs. Soon he left for California, hopping freight trains and hitching rides along the way. His songs, considered subversive by some, supported the efforts of working people to organise and became part of American left-wing ceremony. Beyond the politics, however, is the deceptively simple lyric of a shrewd and observant
self-made and self-taught man who understood the reach of song. Guthrie wrote the song as a reaction to Irving Berlin’s wildly patriotic “God
A doctor who would not go home and sit still Elsie Inglis Leah Leneman. Edinburgh: NMS Publishing. 1998. Pp 94. £5·99. ISBN 1-901663-09-4. r Elsie Inglis’ death in 1917 was marked by a service at St Margaret’s, Westminster, conducted by the Bishop of Oxford and attended by distinguished representatives of the Allied Governments, the Red Cross Societies, and women’s societies. Her body lay in state in St Giles’ Cathedral, Edinburgh, and the Queen sent a letter of condolence to her sister. The Lancet devoted nearly a page to her obituary (1917; ii: 875). Honoured and revered in death, she was a remarkable woman whose story is worth the telling. Elsie Inglis, one of the first women to qualify in medicine in Scotland, started a hospital for women and children in Edinburgh, which survived until 1988 (now a ward in the Western General Hospital bears her name), and she was active in the women’s suffrage movement. But her finest achievement was her work for the Scottish Women’s Hospitals for Foreign Service during World War I. Her idea was to send to the seat of war hospital units staffed solely
D
THE LANCET • Vol 352 • December 19/26, 1998
by women. She was rebuffed by the British War Office and by the Royal Army Medical Corps—with the words “My good lady, go home and sit still”. That, luckily, she did not do. Instead, the units were offered to the Allied governments, which were more receptive to medical women than the British. The result of her efforts was establishment of a large hospital in France by the first December of the war, followed by units in Serbia. Elsie Inglis arrived in Serbia early in 1915, and helped to fight the typhus epidemic raging in the army and civilian populations. She was soon operating on men—which had been impossible for a woman before the war. She was reknowned for her aseptic technique. She also fell in love with the Serbs, writing to her sister that they were “a very charming people, very like the Irish, in almost every way, but much better looking”. Elsie Inglis was to serve that (at the time) hapless country well. Later in 1915 the Serbs found themselves isolated in their fight against the
Bless America”. Despite its clear populism, the Guthrie tune was quickly sanitised and popularised and became a kind of national anthem. Sensing this, just before he died of Huntington’s in 1967, Guthrie carefully took his son (the folksinger Arlo) into their backyard to teach him the more pointed verses, the overtly leftist ones—the ones we never sang in school because they never made it into our grade-school song book: As I went walking, I saw a sign there, And on the sign it said "No Trespassing." But on the other side it didn't say nothing; That side was made for you and me. In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people; By the relief office I seen my people; As they stood hungry, I stood there asking, Is this land made for you and me?
This is a beautiful book. There is a tribute by Pete Seeger, who sang for years with Guthrie, and a short biography. But beyond these are the stunning illustrations. It is hard not to love them, and reading the lyrics alongside, remain unmoved by the feelings that caused them. Buy this book and give it to your children. It is a treasure that makes an heirloom of the song. David Frankel The Lancet, New York, USA
Germans, Austrians, and Bulgarians. Inglis did not desert her beloved Serbs; she remained with her badly wounded patients when evacuations took place, and was at one point taken prisoner. In 1916 she was decorated with the Order of the White Eagle by the Crown Prince of Serbia, the highest honour that country could bestow. On her return to Britain, Elsie Inglis wanted to set up a hospital in Mesopotamia, but once again the War Office was obstructive. She eventually went out to Rumania with a unit for the Serbian Division of the Russian army. Here too she experienced retreat before the invaders and all that that meant in terms of wounded soldiers and fleeing civilians. At last, she spent 4 weeks travelling back to England through Russia, which was in the throes of a revolution, only to die from cancer within a few hours of her return, on Nov 26, 1917. Elsie Inglis has been largely forgotten, according to Leah Leneman, her most recent biographer, and to a straw poll of Lancet editors, none of whom had heard of her. Let us hope that she is better remembered by Scottish graduates, as she doubtless is by the Serbs. Stephanie Clark The Lancet, London, UK
2031