Doctors' Wives

by Frank G. Slaughter

How does a doctor's wife entertain herself while her husband is working?

DELLA played golf...Out-of-town apartments relieved her boredom but led her into the ways of temptation.

AMY toyed with politics...Her soaring ambition almost ruined her husband's career.

MAGGIE turned to alcohol...and her marriage went down the drain.

LORRIE passed the time with other women's husbands.

Wed to superbly successful physicians, these women are bored, neglected, frustrated. This is their shocking story, a penetrating examination of the ailment known as Doctors' Wives Disease.

Genres: Fiction

330 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published September 1, 1967

About the author

Frank Gill Slaughter , pen-name Frank G. Slaughter, pseudonym C.V. Terry, was an American novelist and physician whose books sold more than 60 million copies. His novels drew on his own experience as a doctor and his interest in history and the Bible. Through his novels, he often introduced readers to new findings in medical research and new medical technologies.

Slaughter was born in Washington, D.C., the son of Stephen Lucious Slaughter and Sarah "Sallie" Nicholson Gill. When he was about five years old, his family moved to a farm near Berea, North Carolina, which is west of Oxford, North Carolina. He earned a bachelor's degree from Trinity College (now Duke University) at 17 and went to medical school at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. He began writing fiction in 1935 while a physician at Riverside Hospital in Jacksonville, Florida.

Books by Slaughter include The Purple Quest, Surgeon, U.S.A., Epidemic! , Tomorrow's Miracle and The Scarlet Cord. Slaughter died May 17, 2001 in Jacksonville, Florida.

Reviews

[Cammie · Rating 5 out of 5]

pure absorbing trash

[Laurie · Rating 4 out of 5]

So bad, it is good! Learn about "Doctors' Wives Disease"! Apparently, women need to be needed, and their kids growing up, husband's success and hiring of maids and cooks can lead to migraines, diabetes, morphine addiction and more!

[Stacy · Rating 3 out of 5]

A sad look at lives, that from the outside, look like they have it all together, but inside, are shallow and empty.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this book. Picked it up at a thrift store recently, I believe it was written in 1967 or 1968. Unusual, but very interesting book with the author not only giving the storylines of several doctors' wives, but also citing actual medical information for different medical conditions that come about.

[Nanine Case · Rating 5 out of 5]

Much of the book reads like a medical manual, with vivid descriptions of medical procedures and psychiatric opinions that might, or, might not, hold your interest.

On the other hand, the interwoven stories surrounding the men in the "white coats" and their social-climbing, sexually-driven, alcoholic and neurotic wives, will keep you turning the page!

[Nefty123 · Rating 3 out of 5]

The medical descriptions were very interesting. I enjoyed the plot. A little like Valley of the Dolls.

[clancy · Rating 3 out of 5]

overall i enjoyed this one tho a lot of the theories presented didn't age well and i found the detailed descriptions of medical procedures too detailed

[Chris Cox, a librarian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Every year for our annual Friends of the Library book sale, I look through a lot of the book donations that are to be put out on our sales table. I’ll see some of the same titles every year (Winds of War, A Man in Full) and this yearly haul also includes a few old book club edition copies of the novels of Frank G. Slaughter. Slaughter was a prolific and popular author during the 50’s and 60’s, but is largely a forgotten name in this day and age. I also seem to remember Slaughter’s works being a part of those Reader’s Digest Condensed book series that many families (including mine) use to get on a regular basis during the 60’s and 70’s.

Last year, I saw a couple more of Slaughter’s books on our tables and decided since they popped up annually like those fruitcakes that are passed around as Christmas (Is this still a thing?) I decided to actually read one.

It’s interesting that Slaughter’s massive career book input contains a lot of biblical stories and a lot of steamy (though not too steamy by today’s standards, maybe Two or Three Shades of Gray at the most) about sexual secrets among the rich and successful. Or a combination of both.

The book I chose to read was Doctor’s Wives, a story about medical colleagues and their spouses, who basically sleep around with each other whether they are a dermatologist, a psychiatrist, a urologist or an ear, nose and throat man. The main issue of the story arises when one of the wives gets shot by her jealous husband.

I had fun reading it mostly because my expectations were more Sidney Sheldon than Cormac McCarthy and I did get through the four-hundred page book at least caring about some of the characters.

As I mentioned, the steaminess of the book isn’t too steamy as far as intimate physical details are concerned. Where the author DOES get into details is in medical procedures performed by the doctors. Slaughter got an M. D. from Johns Hopkins and doesn’t hesitate for a minute showing off his medical knowledge. The chapter describing the removal of the bullet from the husband really does read like a medical textbook. So maybe if I’m ever in a position to remove a bullet from an arterial wall, I’ll be ready. Write what you know I guess is Mr. Slaughter’s motto.

There also is a chapter where Slaughter quotes in detail from a 1965 article from The American Journal of Psychiatry called “Psychiatric Illness in the Physician’s Wives." The following is the opening sentence of this article articulates the theme. Due with it as you will-
“Frequent admission of physician’s wives to a private psychiatric hospital raised the question of a possible relationship between the husband’s occupation and the occurrence and manifestation of illnesses in wives.’’

Doctor’s Wives was also popular enough to have been made into a feature film in 1971. This was a period in American films when more sexually explicit themed films (Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice, Pretty Maids All in a Row and Carnal Knowledge for example) came to a theater near you. Doctor’s Wives (the movie) didn’t get the love that those other films got, but it did
boast a fine cast including: Gene Hackman, Richard Crenna, Carroll O’Connor, Janice Rule, Ralph Bellamy, Diana Sands and Dyan Cannon as the sexy Lorrie, though Dyan is only in one scene. Lesser known John Colicos as Lorrie’s husband actually has the showiest performance in the movie. Academy award winning screenwriter Daniel Taradash (From Here to Eternity) wrote the screenplay but unsurprisingly didn’t get nominated for anything for Doctor’s Wives. Academy Award winning composer Elmer Bertnstein (Thoroughly Modern Millie) wrote the score but unsurprisingly didn’t get nominated for Doctor’s Wives either.

This was the last major feature film adaptation from any works of Mr. Slaughter.

Rating the book…I don’t really like giving star ratings that much here, but I’ll
Give Mr. Slaughter’s book ** for the romance and ****for the free medical lessons.
Make it a ***

[Priscilla · Rating 1 out of 5]

A história tem uma premissa ótima: a mulher de um médico é paga em flagrante adultério e é subsequentemente morta pelo mesmo. Tal ato traz em questão a vida de um grupo social - se é que se pode dizer isso - que subsiste em dependência e cujas vidas são tão fúteis e xulas quanto se pode imaginar.

Cenas de sexo, discussão, julgamentos e críticas soçobrando o texto ao ponto de se chegar no último capítulo crendo que algo vai acontecer, mas somo repetidamente levados ao entendimento de que o ato foi uma aberração e não a norma.

Talvez seja interessante para o grupo supracitado. Para outros, nem mesmo a curiosidade de ser uma tradução de Nelson Rodrigues salva.

[Diane · Rating 1 out of 5]

Man, this book was sooo bad it, it was almost good. Hardest to take is the view of women and their roles as wives at the time this was written....partly because I grew up with those ideas and norms. It was, I'll admit, a real struggle to get through, but in other respects, historically interesting. (I didn't say good, but interesting)

[Angela Gill · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not much--a waste of time.

[Suzel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Relendo livros velhos e reencontrei este.
A trama é toda anos 70 mas a paisagem emocional é actualissima.

[Marisa Modroño · Rating 5 out of 5]

Entretenido y de fácil lectura

[Karinirmgard]

Deutscher Titel - Die Frauen vonWeston