Interview with Lawrence Goldstone
Introduction
Lawrence Goldstone, with his wife Nancy, is the author of two critically acclaimed narrative histories of science. He has written for the Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, and Miami Herald. He lives in Westport, Connecticut.
For those who haven't read your new mystery, can you tell us about it?
Anatomy of Deception is a forensic thriller set in Philadelphia in 1889. The cast of characters includes real-life figures, including Dr. William Osler, arguably the greatest physician in American history, Dr. William Halsted, our greatest surgeon, and the controversial painter, Thomas Eakins. While, of course, I hope the book is a fun read, I also explore a number of questions of medical ethics and the morality of change.
You previously researched and wrote about the history of science—nonfiction. Was writing fiction easier? More difficult?
Easier in some ways; more difficult in others. Obviously, the need to weave a story with the requisite ebbs and flows and appropriate degree of suspense is not something a nonfiction writer has to worry about. On the other hand, in nonfiction, there is always the question of what material to use, what to omit, and how to keep the narrative moving so the reader doesn’t use your book as a sleep aid. Writing history, one is always trying to figure out, “What happened?” whereas in fiction, the question is more, “What is going to happen?” For me, being able to move from one set of challenges to the other is great fun.
Three famous men are characters in your novel: Dr. William Osler, Dr. William Halsted, and the painter Thomas Eakins. Was it harder to write them than it was to write your fictional characters? Easier?
Easier, definitely. As a narrative historian, I’m accustomed to delving into the lives and personalities of the men and women about whom I’m writing, and not just recording the events in which they participated. Once I “had” Osler, Halsted, and Eakins, they more or less dictated to me how they would react to the various fictional situations into which they were thrust. A novelist, in my opinion, should always strive to listen to his or her characters, to allow them to determine the course of the story. In the cases of these three men, I had lot to work with and didn’t need to worry so much about consistency.
Readers always want to know where novelists get their ideas. You say that you had the idea for this novel from reading Dr. Osler's history of Johns Hopkins Hospital, in which he revealed a secret about the great surgeon at Hopkins, Dr. Halsted. Can you say something about Dr. Osler's moral dilemma here? To reveal, or not to reveal, this secret?
It’s kind of difficult to answer this without giving away the story, but suffice to say that Dr. Halsted’s professional record, both at Johns Hopkins and in practice, was impeccable. Dr. Osler might well have felt that revealing what he knew about Dr. Halsted would serve no purpose. The only practical impact would be depriving the public of the services of the greatest surgeon in the United States.
Osler specified that his history of Hopkins not be unsealed until fifty years after his death. So he probably—obviously—wrestled with his conscience in wanting the world to know the truth. Should doctors always tell the truth—when they know it?
I can’t really answer that one. As a patient, I would always want to know the truth, and any doctor I see is made aware of that. If you’re referring to whether or not one doctor should tell the truth about the medical profession as a whole, or about other specific doctors, while there are no absolutes, I would like to see more accountability. In police work, it’s called “The Blue Wall of Silence;” the Mafia calls it “Omerta;” doctors don’t have a name for the unwillingness to speak out, but I thinks it hurts rather than protects the profession.
What do you mean when you say, in your Author's Note, that "Medicine in 1889 was a science teetering on the edge of immense advances in curing disease and alleviating suffering. I believe we as a society are in a similar position today. Dr. Osler's dilemma could easily be our own"?
I was thinking in particular of the current controversies over stem cell research and human cloning. The ethical dilemmas that scientists face have not, I think, varied all much through the centuries. Those who in the forefront of discovery are always butting up against the question of what price society should, or will, pay for progress.
Doctors in 1889 would probably not have believed the seeming miracles that doctors can perform today. Do you believe that the pace of medical advancement will continue, so that 100 years from now, our medicine will seem as primitive as the medicine of 1889 seems to us?
Absolutely. For example, in surgery, incisions for many procedures are becoming smaller and smaller and, in some cases, are being made by robotic devices with the surgeon merely standing at a console. I would guess that 100 years hence, surgeons, using directed ultra-sound perhaps, will be able to perform complex operations without breaking the skin at all. Real Star Trek stuff. I also expect practical applications from the immense advances in particle physics to be jaw-dropping.
What's next for you? Another mystery?
I am working on two books actually. One is another mystery set in New York in 1899. It will also have a medical and forensic theme, although, in the spirit of the genre, I don’t wish to say more about it yet. It will be out late next year. I’m also in the final stages of editing a nonfiction book, The Activist, which is a political history of the most important Supreme Court case in history, Marbury v. Madison. This is the case that provided the Court with much of its current power and the decision is extremely controversial. That book is due out in September.