In an essay that he wrote for the catalog of a Speyer exhibition on the history of medicine, Noah Gordon recalled his beginnings as a writer.

The main part of his remarks, however, take up descriptions of his experiences in medical professions: how he attended autopsies as a young journalist in Boston, how he worked as a medical journalist and later as a volunteer paramedic.

At the very end it is said that he was then able to “write the one story of the young man Rob” because he was able to fall back on a “multitude of memories”.

Tilman Spreckelsen

Editor in the features section.

  • Follow I follow

"Medicus", the title of the Speyer exhibition in question (FAZ of January 13, 2020) is based on Noah Gordon's world bestseller about the English orphan boy Rob Cole, who ran into a bad boy in the 11th century and learned a profession from him that was somewhere between charlatanry and humble medicine.

When the Bader dies, Rob finds his way that leads him to Persia.

On the way he takes up various approaches to medical treatment options, but at the same time undertakes his own research and thus proves to be a far more inquisitive doctor who is much more inquisitive than his contemporaries and who appropriates the best of the various therapeutic concepts.

The original "The Physician" was published in 1986 and became a bestseller, especially in Germany, under the title "Der Medicus", which found countless imitators.

Gordon, whose first novel "The Rabbi" was published in 1965, dedicated two further novels to the medical dynasty that began with Rob Cole.

Gordon was not interested in an image that was secured in all directions by sources, even if he carried out extensive studies for his books and was therefore able to fall back on much more than just his own medical practice views.

For the genre of the historical novel, in which he placed his bestsellers, he worked as an innovator, even if he did not strive for the sophistication of Umberto Eco's six years before the “Medicus” novel “The Name of the Rose”.

Gordon died on Monday shortly after his 95th birthday.