cover image A Family of Doctors

A Family of Doctors

David Hellerstein. Hill & Wang, $21 (269pp) ISBN 978-0-8090-4405-4

In a briskly flowing narrative, psychiatrist, essayist and novelist Hellerstein ( Battles of Life and Death ) records the accomplishments since the Civil War of 13 doctors in five generations of his Midwestern Jewish family. The family tree includes an EKG pioneer and the author's own father, mother, brothers and two sisters, each in a different specialty. In lively portraits and anecdotes culled from family attic archives, Hellerstein describes early, more primitive, medical procedures together with his ancestors' romances, scandals and travels, including a moving account of the liberation of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp witnessed by his father during military service. While citing modern medical advances, Hellerstein deplores today's diminished professional dedication and the advent of high costs, impersonal care and bureaucracy in medicine. Photos not seen by PW. (Apr.)