A MATTER OF CHOICE.
By Henry A.Schroeder, M.D. Brattleboro, Vt.: StephenGreene Press, 1968. 194 pp. $6.95.
A decade ago at coffee a group of Dartmouth English professors, all except one productive scholars, forceful teachers, and omnivorous readers, were discussing how rare wisdom is. Tactfully excluding themselves, they asked who on the faculty had the wisdom characteristic of Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Samuel Johnson. There was no one.
That was before Dr. Schroeder and his book. Reinhold Niebuhr, the theologian, describes it as "replete with wisdom." Walter Muir Whitehill, the librarian, calls it "beautiful and wise." Elizabeth Coatsworth, the writer, speaks of its "wisdom and freshness."
Dartmouth Professor of Physiology, Dr. Schroeder, for 32 years a heart specialist and a leader in the treatment of hyptertension, hardening of the arteries, and diabetes, works in a unique metal-free laboratory on top of a Vermont mountain. He is author of a couple of hundred scientific publications. and a travel book. A lay reader in the Episcopal Church, he served five years in World War II as Naval Flight Surgeon and Aviation Medicine Specialist. A Matter ofChoice was written in Brattleboro, St. Thomas, Northeast Harbor (Maine), Kennebunkport, Rockport (Mass.), and Montreal. Neither the man nor the book is insular.
Primarily directing his ideas toward the younger generation and their scepticism, self-indulgence, shallowness, censoriousness, and impatience, Dr. Schroeder attempts to instill in them reverence for what they would scoff at, humanistic values. He must therefore give sharp pronouncements about sins against the body and mind, and he can be amusing and devastating about bikinis, homosexuals, alcohol and nicotine, drug adventurers, food faddists, the pill, polluted rivers and polluted air, beatniks and hippies.
Obliquely satirical, the book is centrally constructive. Dr. Schroeder himself realizes that his truisms of today may sound like the platitudes of yesterday, but he states them with such clarity and grace that they seem wonderfully fresh. He upholds what now is so often mocked: belief in God, the enrichment of self through love and loyalty, intellectual curiosity, university discipline, commitment to creative ideas, hard work and challenging careers without the mephitic odor of money, and the dignity of human beings now lost in totalitarian regimes. Schroeder humor and wit may disarm pedant-hating youth.
Samples: "Never go to a psychoanalyst unless you want to wreck your marriage." "Sex is a woman's finest weapon, and it can be her meanest." . . the invention of twin beds has as much to do with the present high rate of divorce as any other single factor. It takes tough characters to remain angry in a double bed." "Freud has broken down the walls between the living room, the bathroom, and the bedroom."
And here's one for Al Foley. "But introverted prayer can be overdone. A Vermont farmer was reprimanded by his overly pious neighbor for cussing till the air was blue. He answered: 'ls it any worse for me to swear so much and do no harm than for you to pray so much and do no good?' "
This book may not work out as a Christmas present for others. You will keep it for yourself.
