The Doctor and the Devils

London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1953. 1st. hardback. Very good 1st edition, missing d/j, orange cloth boards (rubbing on spine), gilt spine titling bright; text block firm, pages clean and unmarked. No inscrptions. 12mo (190 x 130 / 7_"" x 5""). This dramatic and gripping story is based on the grisly careers of the murderers Burke and Hare and is in the form of a film scenario. This infamous pair came to trial in Edinburgh over a century ago, and Dylan Thomas was fascinated by their grim tale. Thomas Rock, a brilliant lecturer in anatomy, is disliked by his colleagues for his success and for his disregard of the medical and social conventions of the day. So popular are his lectures that his sole source of 'demonstration material'-”the public hangman is totally inadequate. Thus he comes to rely on Fallon and Broom, two body-snatchers who are attracted to their vocation by its handsome rewards, though repelled by the nature and risks of their trade. Their greed, however, sweeps all before it, and they decide to increase their turnover by quickly suffocating the weakest and loneliest of the lodgers in the seedy lodging-house which is the front to their activities. But drunkenness and clum- siness put the police on their trail, and Dr Rock, implicated as well, becomes an ogre in the popular mind from whom the poor can never be safe. Devoted as he is to the pursuit of truth in the science of medicine, he realizes in a moment of agony that the mob. yelling for his blood, may after all be right. 'Extraordinarily powerful . . . there is not a word nor an emotion wasted.' Bonamy Dobree, Spectator.