Machen Sie sich frei, Herr Doktor!

Doctor in the House #13

by Richard Gordon

Wenn der Arzt befiehlt: "Machen Sie sich frei", beginnen wir zu zittern. Denn wir wissen, unsere Hoffnung ("Mir fehlt ohnehin nichts"), unsere Selbstachtung, unser Recht auf fettes Essen, Zigaretten, Alkohol und zuletzt das gute Geld, sind dahin, wenn wir uns ert einmal ausziehen. Nackt stehen wir dann da, der Willkür und dem Skalpell eines wildfremden Menschen ausgeliefert...

199 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1973

About the author

Richard Gordon is the pen name used by Gordon Ostlere (born Gordon Stanley Ostlere on September 15, 1921), an English surgeon and anaesthetist. As Richard Gordon, Ostlere has written several novels, screenplays for film and television and accounts of popular history, mostly dealing with the practice of medicine. He is most famous for a long series of comic novels on a medical theme starting with Doctor in the House, and the subsequent film, television and stage adaptations. His The Alarming History of Medicine was published in 1993, and he followed this with The Alarming History of Sex.

Gordon worked as anaesthetist at St. Bartholomew's Hospital (where he was a medical student) and later as a ship's surgeon and as assistant editor of the British Medical Journal. He has published several technical books under his own name including Anaesthetics for Medical Students(1949); later published as Ostlere and Bryce-Smith's Anaesthetics for Medical Students in 1989, Anaesthetics and the Patient (1949) and Trichlorethylene Anaesthesia (1953). In 1952, he left medical practice and took up writing full time. He has an uncredited role as an anesthesiologist in the movie Doctor in the House.

The early Doctor novels, set in the fictitious St Swithin's, a teaching hospital in London, were initially witty and apparently autobiographical; later books included more sexual innuendo and farce. The novels were very successful in Britain in Penguin paperback during the 1960s and 1970s. Richard Gordon also contributed to Punch magazine and has published books on medicine, gardening, fishing and cricket.

The film adaptation of Doctor in the House was released in 1954, two years after the book, while Doctor at Sea came out the following year with Brigitte Bardot. Dirk Bogarde starred as Dr. Simon Sparrow in both. The later spin-off TV series were often written by other well-known British comic performers.

Reviews

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can appreciate the intricacy with which this is set up, but there was something about the timing that was really off for me, causing almost all the jokes to fall flat. Maybe I just didn't appreciate the rhythm, or the language style, or something, but I'd end up drifting out and though I understood what was happening, I just kind of noted it instead of finding it amusing. I think I chuckled once. I can see why it was supposed to be funny, and I'm sure plenty find it so, but I didn't really.

[Seb · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mein drittes Buch von diesem Autor. Ich fand es diesmal wieder lustiger als das zweite welches ich gelesen habe. Diesmal war nicht der Autor selbst der Hauptcharakter, aber ich fand es dennoch ganz okay bis gut. An das erste kommt es allerdings nicht heran.

[Sumit · Rating 2 out of 5]

Witty. Carefully built ending.