Paging Dr. House...

My writing class (ha, yes, I am in one, not that you would know from this blog) teacher assigned us a piece that originally appeared in The New Yorker a few decades ago, by the "Annals of Medicine" staff writer, Berton Roueche (accent on the final E - need to figure out how to do accents in this thing).  In order to get a literal hold on a copy of the essay, "The Incurable Wound," I checked out of the library a collection of his work, The Medical Detectives.  So far I am totally loving it - I just started with the first essay last night on the bus, and have been zipping through.  Going to skip over "Incurable" when I get to it, so I can read it closer to next Tuesday's class, but I am already regretting there aren't more stories in the collection.  According to some of the stories that Prof. T referenced last week, when she was talking about the writer/book, I am pretty sure this is where some of the "House" plotlines come from - when C and I heard her say a teenager is poisoned by wearing pants that were soaked in a chemical while they were still baled, we were like "House!" simultaneously - and these are just as fun, so far.  The strictly medical stuff is a little dry, although Roueche does a great job of writing about science/medicine for a lay audienence, but the fun really is in the "detective work" that the doctors do, tracking down first what could have made their patients sick, and then how it could have happened.  Our teacher kept saying this would be a great book "to give your dad" but I already want to share it around to everyone I know who appreciates an engaging story and nice (humorous, concise, literate) writing.  Weirdly, the book is strongly reminding me of this book of ghost stories I had, and read to pieces, as a kid.  Don't remember what it was called, but I think it had a purple and black cover.  And I think maybe they weren't necessarily ghost stories, but just, like, mysterious occurrences.  I think one might have been something to do with spontaneous combustion, and I think something else was maybe a house that was haunted by Dolly Madison???  In any case, I don't know why, except for maybe the shared spare-but-active prose, but Medical Detectives kept making me think of that other book - which I probably haven't thought of in years.  I need to do some digging, because last time I felt this way I was reading Farenheit 451, and kept thinking - for weeks - of Something Wicked This Way Comes (the movie) for some reason, before I realized that the movie was based on another book by Ray Bradbury.  Ugh.  And Something Wicked This Way Comes makes me think of The Watcher in the Woods, which still scared me, even when I got
older.  Well, okay, Bette Davis, all balding and creepy, scared me.