Arrowsmith

by Sinclair Lewis

Genres: Literary Fiction

Synopsis

Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis - is a novel by American author Sinclair Lewis, first published in 1925. It won the 1926 Pulitzer Prize (which Lewis declined). Lewis was greatly assisted in its preparation by science writer Paul de Kruif,[1] who received 25% of the royalties on sales, although Lewis was listed as the sole author. Arrowsmith is an early major novel dealing with the culture of science. It was written in the period after the reforms of medical education flowing from the Flexner Report on Medical Education in the United States and Canada: A Report to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1910, which had called on medical schools in the United States to adhere to mainstream science in their teaching and research. Plot Arrowsmith tells the story of bright and scientifically minded Martin Arrowsmith of Elk Mills, Winnemac (the same fictional state in which several of Lewis's other novels are set), as he makes his way from a small town in the Midwest to the upper echelons of the scientific community at a prestigious foundation in New York City. Along the way he begins medical school. He becomes engaged to one woman, cheats on her with another woman, becomes engaged to the second woman and then finally invites both women to a lunch to settle the issue. He eventually insults his mentor, Max Gottlieb, and is suspended from school. He takes up life as an ordinary worker, then marries Leora with her family supporting him based on the promise that he will take up private practice as the only doctor in tiny Wheatsylvania, North Dakota. Frustrated with the work, he moves on to a job at the state Department of Public Health branch in Nautilus, Iowa, then becomes romantically involved with the young daughter of its local director. After a series of political disputes, he resigns and joins the staff of an exclusive private hospital in Chicago. Finally, Arrowsmith is recognized by his former mentor, Gottlieb, for a scientific paper he has written, and is invited to take a post with a wealthy and elite research institute in New York City. The book's climax deals with Arrowsmith's discovery of a phage that destroys bacteria and his experiences as he faces an outbreak of bubonic plague on a fictional Caribbean island. His scientific principles demand that he avoid its mass use on the Island until thoroughly tested, even at the expense of lives that might be saved. Only after his wife, Leora, and all the other people who came with him from the institute to the island die of plague, does he reluctantly abandon rigorous science and begins to treat everyone on the island with the phage. While there he becomes romantically involved with a wealthy socialite, whom he later marries. In spite of his life-saving, he regards his actions on the island as a complete betrayal of science and his principles.

Release date: July 10, 2012

Publisher: HarperPerennial Classics

Print pages: 445