Doctors' Wives

Book excerpt: Doctors' Wives' Disease is not an imaginary ailment. For, in the closed, inbred society of a great medical center, these women, the wives of superbly successful physicians, are driven by loneliness, boredom, and frustration along forbidden pathways. And alcohol, drugs, and promiscuity become their alternatives to despair. A radio bulletin tears the camouflage from the apparent prosperous tranquility of the community: "A prominent Weston physician has just shot and killed his wife. A man, with the victim at the time and identified only as another doctor, was also seriously wounded." Five doctors' wives hear the announcement, and each one of them comes with despair and terror to realize that her husband, himself, just might be involved in the scandal—either as philanderer or killer. Where has trust gone? And where is love? Beneath this scandalous and passionate picture of human weakness, is a tale, perhaps even more striking: and that is Dr. Slaughter's brilliant, minute, expert's picture of the urgent business of an ultramodern hospital. His descriptions—in fascinating detail—of a heart operation and a brain operation, are breathtakingly suspenseful, and based on the most advanced medical and surgical knowledge.