{"product_id":"2940013670914","title":"The Story of Dr. Wassell","description":"Corydon Wassell was born on July 4 (a good date), 1884, at Little Rock,\u003cbr\u003eArkansas--a good place that can also claim Douglas MacArthur as one of\u003cbr\u003eits sons. The Wassell family came originally from Kidderminster, England,\u003cbr\u003eand the \"Corydon\" came from well, nobody seems to know.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eYoung Cory enjoyed a mixed education and a wandering youth; he did not\u003cbr\u003edecide on a profession till he was twenty-two. Then he studied at Johns\u003cbr\u003eHopkins, after which he graduated from the University of Arkansas in 1909\u003cbr\u003eand began practising in the small Arkansas village of Tillar.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor the next five years he faced the usual struggles, problems, and\u003cbr\u003ehardships of a young doctor, but he was a gay sort of fellow, fond of a\u003cbr\u003egood time and a good story, and by no means depressed by a world in which\u003cbr\u003ethe desires of the few so manifestly outweigh the needs of the many. He\u003cbr\u003edid, however, find himself taking sides in it--rather as Moliére's M.\u003cbr\u003eJourdain found himself talking prose in it--with a naïve unawareness that\u003cbr\u003eanything so natural to him could be given a name. But it could, and\u003cbr\u003edoubtless was; and meanwhile he went his own way, working hard, enjoying\u003cbr\u003elife, and acquiring considerable popularity among those who could not pay\u003cbr\u003etheir bills. Two things he did are worth special mention: he organized a\u003cbr\u003esort of group-medicine scheme for Negro workers, and he married a village\u003cbr\u003eschoolteacher.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOne day in 1913 the President of Suchow University came to Tillar and\u003cbr\u003etalked in the Episcopal Church about the needs of China. After the\u003cbr\u003emeeting the doctor found himself taking sides again--the same side,\u003cbr\u003eactually, though at the other side of the world. His wife being in full\u003cbr\u003eagreement, they both left Arkansas as prospective missionaries a few\u003cbr\u003emonths later to make a new home at Wuchang, on the Yangtze River. Here\u003cbr\u003ethe doctor studied Chinese, worked in the hospital at Boone University,\u003cbr\u003eand raised a family.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eExcept for a short furlough in 1919 (during which his fourth child, a\u003cbr\u003eson, was born at Little Rock), Dr. Wassell spent in all a dozen years in\u003cbr\u003eChina. Four of them were European War years--all of them were Chinese war\u003cbr\u003eyears. He did a great many things during this time. He learned to love\u003cbr\u003ethe Chinese people, and to derive a great personal happiness from being\u003cbr\u003eamong them; he diagnosed, treated, and operated at hospitals; he took a\u003cbr\u003ecourse in neurology at Peking Medical College and studied parasitology at\u003cbr\u003eHunan Yale; he published articles on encephalitis in medical journals and\u003cbr\u003eexamined thousands of snails in a search for the carrier of amoebic\u003cbr\u003edysentery; he taught Chinese students, both in Chinese and in English; he\u003cbr\u003emixed well with American and English residents, and had no trouble in\u003cbr\u003eavoiding religious friction with Buddhists and Catholics. He was perhaps\u003cbr\u003eevery other inch a missionary. Presently he resigned from the society and\u003cbr\u003etook on the triple tasks of port doctor at Kukiang, consultant in a\u003cbr\u003eCatholic hospital, and a private practice; there were changes too in his\u003cbr\u003epersonal life, for his wife had died, and he married again--an American\u003cbr\u003emissionary-nurse (his present wife); and all the time he was\u003cbr\u003eintermittently mixed up with war and revolution as well as with disease\u003cbr\u003eand pestilence, so that he served with equal readiness a Chinese army at\u003cbr\u003ethe front and a British Consulate in a besieged concession...a busy,\u003cbr\u003evaried, arduous career, confusing only if you look at it as anything but\u003cbr\u003ethat of a man trying to be of constant use during times and in a country\u003cbr\u003eboth confusing and confused.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e(And--significantly for what happened later--he joined the U. S. Naval\u003cbr\u003eReserve.)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 1927 confusion, reaching a climax, drove him home--back to Little\u003cbr\u003eRock, where he had another fling at private practice and earned just\u003cbr\u003eenough in the first six months to pay his office rent. Soon, however, a\u003cbr\u003ecounty job fell to him, and this was much better--that of organizing and\u003cbr\u003eofficering a public health system in the schools. But once again--and\u003cbr\u003eagain with something of M. Jourdain's unawareness--the doctor found\u003cbr\u003ehimself a pioneer. This time, in addition to the Negro, there was the\u003cbr\u003eCatholic, and the man of any race or religion who couldn't afford a\u003cbr\u003etwo-dollar fee for immunization against a diphtheria epidemic. Dr.\u003cbr\u003eWassell championed them all--not as a crusader, but as a public-health\u003cbr\u003eofficial who very simply believed it was his duty to safeguard public\u003cbr\u003ehealth.","brand":"WDS Publishing","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47079595409648,"sku":"2940013670914","price":2.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940013670914_p0.jpg?v=1763583740","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940013670914","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}