I have always been interested in doctors — as persons more than as physicians, per se. My mother worked some 30 years for doctors, first at a pediatric clinic, then next door at a surgical clinic. The doctors she worked for were people we knew, fathers (they were all men, then) of boys and girls I knew and went to school with, played with. They were a varied group, from the clean-cut and pious type to the wild-haired alcoholic to the quiet, sad-faced, fatherly depressive who often performed his examinations with a cigarette in one corner of his mouth. All but the pious one often smelled of strong hand soap, cigarettes, and sometimes, I think, whiskey. That may have been only the alcoholic (at least he was the only obvious alcoholic, with a reputation). They were kindly...