The Citadel

Product Information

Ethics, both medical and personal, is a central theme. How to live a life and the road toward finding one’s own way is movingly portrayed. Life’s ups and down, happiness and sorrow--both are here. The reader observes the allure of money and fame and the depths to which they can bring a person. This was a very important element of the story for me! Cambridge Dictionary. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/citadel. Accessed 31 May 2020. AJ Cronin (1896-1981), an author little known to those below the age of fifty, was arguably the most successful novelist writing in English in the 1930s. His best known novel, The Citadel, was published in 19371. The book paints an unflattering portrait of British medicine in the inter-war years. It is widely thought that the book influenced the result of the 1945 general election in Britain, and the subsequent establishment of the National Health Service (NHS) by the Labour government in 19482. The Citadel anticipates such phenomena as evidence-based medicine and continuing medical education. This paper examines the influence of the novel and argues that although Cronin’s novel did significantly influence public opinion in Britain in favour of socialized medicine, the novel was never intended as propaganda for a state-controlled national health service. On the contrary, Cronin was against state control. Analysis of the novel is informed by recent biographical revelations about Cronin, and the blurring of the margin between fact and fiction in Cronin’s life and work is examined.

If we go on trying to make out that everything's wrong outside the profession and everything is right within, it means the death of scientific progress." This book is the journey of a young doctor fresh out of college, eager to help everyone with his knowledge and skills who ends up lost in the charm of money and fame and losses all interest in the morals and values he once fought for. This is a story of a woman who fell in love with an honest hardworking doctor who went to great lengths to save lives, only to find him changing for the worse into someone whom they both despised. The story of her struggles to make him realise his mistakes. This is a book about medical ethics and what it means to be a doctor. It is a great read and all aspiring medical students must definitely read this stunning book. Daniel Boffey. The Guardian: Health Policy. Timeline of UK’s coronavirus PPE shortage. (13 Apr 2020). Beyond This Place ( CBS), featuring Farley Granger, Peggy Ann Garner, Max Adrian, Brian Donlevy, and Shelley Winters Samuel, R. (22 June 1995). "North and South: A Year in a Mining Village". London Review of Books. 17 (12): 3–6.

Annan N. Our Age: The Generation That Made Post-war Britain. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson; 1990. The wider ramifications of books such as The Citadel are also worth considering as a resource for teaching and learning. In the 1980s, while teaching medical ethics with Professor Robin Downie (Professor of Moral Philosophy) in Glasgow, we introduced students to literature to emphasise the broader dimensions of medicine. 3 These were poems, plays, stories and novels, all of which raised issues of the practice of medicine and health. They provided a forum for discussion and debate and encouraged reflection and the ability to articulate views. Thus literature can provide a focus for considering one’s own clinical practice and how personal views on clinical issues amongst doctors can vary. In addition, books, poems and plays can highlight issues related to the social determinants of health-poverty, employment and housing, and can demonstrate very effectively problems in lifestyle and their impact on well-being. For example there are some very powerful images created on issues of drunkenness and cigarette smoking, and the problems of HIV infection and its causation. Such texts can all be used to help the professions learn about such issues. A.J. Cronin: Biography on Undiscovered Scotland". www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk . Retrieved 13 August 2023.

Several other books have this kind of storyline but in different scenarios and covering different heath issues, such as: MacPherson, Hamish (3 January 2021). "AJ Cronin: The doctor turned novelist whose heart always remained in Scotland". The National. Glasgow . Retrieved 15 January 2023. This process has widened into the arts and humanities generally and there are now numerous organisations and at least one journal covering this area. The use of theatre, dance, the visual arts and creative writing can all improve well-being and happiness. Cronin also came to feel, "If we consider the physical universe... we cannot escape the notion of a primary Creator.... Accept evolution with its fossils and elementary species, its scientific doctrine of natural causes. And still you are confronted with the same mystery, primary and profound. Ex nihilo nihil, as the Latin tag of our schooldays has it: nothing can come of nothing." This was brought home to him in London, where in his spare time he had organised a working boys' club. One day he invited a distinguished zoologist to deliver a lecture to the members. The speaker, adopting "a frankly atheistic approach", described the sequence of events leading to the emergence, "though he did not say how," of the first primitive life-form from lifeless matter. When he concluded, there was polite applause. Then, "a mild and very average youngster rose nervously to his feet," and with a slight stammer asked how there came to be anything in the first place. The naïve question took everyone by surprise. The lecturer "looked annoyed, hesitated, slowly turned red. Then, before he could answer, the whole club burst into a howl of laughter. The elaborate structure of logic offered by the test-tube realist had been crumpled by one word of challenge from a simple-minded boy." [12] Family [ edit ] Cronin with family in 1938Ultimately Cronin returned to Europe, to reside in Lucerne and Montreux, Switzerland, for the last 25 years of his life. He continued to write into his eighties. He included among his friends Laurence Olivier, Charlie Chaplin and Audrey Hepburn, to whose first son he was a godfather. Richard E. Berlin was the godfather of his son Andrew. Archibald Joseph Cronin was a Scottish novelist, dramatist, and non-fiction writer who was one of the most renowned storytellers of the twentieth century. His best-known works are The Citadel and The Keys of the Kingdom, both of which were made into Oscar-nominated films. He also created the Dr. Finlay character, the hero of a series of stories that served as the basis for the long-running BBC television and radio series entitled Dr. Finlay's Casebook. The texts are the property of their respective authors and we thank them for giving us the opportunity to share for free to students, teachers and users of the Web their texts will used only for illustrative educational and scientific purposes only. And another book that should not be forgotten is The Physician by Noah Gordon, which is already in my TBR list for quite some time already.