John Raffensperger, MD, describes how doctors in the mid-20th century learned medicine in the autopsy room, the laboratory, and at bedside, training to become well-rounded general physicians.
Since then, many doctors have specialized during medical school, depending on X-rays and blood tests, rather than listening and “laying on of hands.” Medicine became a de-personalized business, subject to greedy insurance executives and hospital administrators.
“A compelling and candid account of how surgeons learn and refine their skills. John Raffensperger shares successes and failures, advances in medicine and surgery, the faults in today’s system, what we might learn from health care systems in other countries, and the pitfalls of hospital politics.” – Di Saggau, Island Sun newspaper, Santiva/Captiva Florida
“A candid narrative of more than forty years in practice and teaching of a pioneering pediatric surgeon, infused with historical perspective of medical education and medical practice … Dr. Raffensperger has done it all over those years, developing new procedures, teaching medical students and residents at the bedside, serving as surgeon-in-chief at a leading center for pediatric surgery, the Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago, and authoring books … His concern for patients’ welfare shines through the book as he calls for fundamental reforms based on a single payer national health insurance.” – John Geyman, MD, Professor Emeritus of Family Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle
“In the field of contemporary health care, it is generally acknowledged that Dr. John Raffensperger is one of the most eminent pediatric surgeons of our day… We are now lucky to see him produce a memoir … the portrayal of a life devoted to the care of sick children.” – F. Gonzalez-Crussi, MD, Emeritus Professor of Pathology, Northwestern University, Chicago
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Reconstruction: Heal or Kill
Reconstruction: Heal or Kill takes place in a small Illinois town in 1871, portraying life in rural America. The novel reveals the prejudices against freed slaves during the post-Civil War era, when the KKK was terrorizing freed slaves.
Tom, a teenage boy, had planned on a life fighting Indians, until a new doctor, trained in Edinburgh, arrives on a steamboat and convinces him that healing is better than killing. The doctor, an ex-Union soldier, is an expert pistol shot, drinks whisky, and plays cards. The townspeople reject him until he saves a friend of President Grant.
Tom now aspires to be a doctor, but his plans are thwarted when his father dies and he is sent to an orphanage. He escapes and nearly freezes to death. A family of freed slaves nurse him back to health. The Klan and the local sheriff have been terrorizing the family to get their land. Tom becomes the doctor’s assistant, studying medicine by digging up a skeleton to learn anatomy. He is also there to protect a freed slave from lynching.
Bullets fly when the doctor takes on the leader of the Klan. Tom and his friend break up a Klan meeting, but in the melee, the Klan murders a Negro boy. In the end, Tom and the doctor operate on the Klan leader for a gunshot wound, showing that a doctor must first be a healer.
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Jennifer the Flying Alligator
Jennifer, a young alligator, was smaller and different from her brothers and sisters. She did not eat frogs and small dogs, but liked spaghetti and tacos. One day a big cousin who normally lived at the deep end of the pond chased Jennifer and tried to bite her tail. Jennifer jumped into the air, flapped her front legs, and flew. She crashed into a tree and hurt her nose, but didn’t quit. She continued to fly. From high in the sky, she could see where the two-legged animals had built houses and parking lots on all the places where animals once lived. Uncle Al, a wise old alligator, advised her to find the Everglades, where there were ponds, trees, other animals, and good things to eat.
She flew south but got lost, was hurt, caught in a net, and nearly crushed by cars. She finally found peaceful lakes, flocks of birds, and an Indian girl who introduced her to the animals who lived on the islands and small ponds in the Everglades. Jennifer taught her new friends to eat berries and fruit instead of each other, so they could live together in peace. Her happiness was complete when Jennifer found Oscar, another flying alligator.
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The Deadly Blue Diamond
The Deadly Blue Diamond, a fast-paced thriller, pits a young surgeon against vicious mobsters, crooked cops, and Chicago politicians. Little Louie, who killed his first man at age fifteen, organized a robbery to steal the Blue Diamond, a power symbol, that belonged to Al Capone. The heist goes bad. Rooky cops shoot Louie’s punch-drunk accomplice after he swallowed the diamond. A young surgeon, who lost his confidence in the Korean War, operates for the gunshot, but doesn’t find the diamond. The patient dies.
The cops and a big-time politician claim the surgeon stole the diamond. The surgeon and a sexy reporter steal the body from the morgue to retrieve the diamond, but the hit man shoots a cop and kidnaps the reporter, the surgeon, and the corpse. The surgeon does an autopsy with a switchblade, finds the diamond, and stabs the mobster. The chase is on, through the streets of Chicago into Bubbly Creek and onto storm-tossed Lake Michigan. The reporter uses her charms to lay hands on the diamond.
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Missing in Action : The Apache Campaign, 1885-1886
Missing in Action is the sequence to Reconstruction: Heal or Kill. By 1885, the army had subdued the Plains Indians, but Geronimo’s Apaches were on the loose. They raided, looted, and murdered along the border between Arizona and Mexico and disappeared as if by magic. The army could not find the Apaches, let alone defeat them.
Tom Slocum, a doctor’s apprentice in Reconstruction: Heal or Kill, has become a skilled surgeon. When his wife dies and his best friend is reported missing in action, Tom sets off, with Zeke, his teenage sidekick, to find his friend. During their journey down the Mississippi, Tom encounters crooked card sharks and an exploding steamboat. Zeke finds the girl who wears nothing but red bloomers, but gets drunk and loses his money.
When they arrive at Fort Bowie in the Arizona territory, Tom becomes a contract surgeon. He operates on soldiers and Indians, doesn’t believe in killing, but uses his pistol when necessary. Indian myths and rumors lead him deep into Mexico to find his friend. When captured by a Mexican colonel, he, along with some Indian friends, fights to escape. He is there when Geronimo surrenders, Tom’s friend says, “This is the end of the wild west.”
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Red Tide
Red Tide is the story of Peter, a shy, dreamy city boy, who learns the beauty of nature and copes with his mother’s illness while living with his grandfather on an island off the coast of Florida.
His grandfather, a retired doctor, and Andrea, a girl with mischievous eyes, teach him about the animals that live on the island. He overcomes bullying by his new schoolmates and fear of the out-of-doors with a series of adventures. His grandfather teaches him to fish and how to sail a boat. With his newly gained confidence, he helps save a patch of wetland from developers and becomes an activist to protect the environment. He and Andrea discover dead fish and birds on the beach that were poisoned by red tide. When he learns that red tide, a microorganism in the water that is deadly to marine life, is stimulated by agricultural fertilizers, he writes a letter to the governor and encloses a dead fish. The dead fish gets him in trouble with the police but he becomes a hero to his classmates.
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About The Author:
John Raffensperger, MD, operated on babies with birth defects and children with cancer for nearly fifty years. He taught students and residents while finding time to write medical textbooks. After retiring, he is now writing historic fiction with a medical theme.