I haven't actually read "Arrowsmith", but I can guess the major elements based on the film version.
At the time of Arrowsmith, typical medical practice was mainly a primitive venture, outside of surgery and bone-mending. Quacks abounded dealing with disease. Pasteur changed all that by discovering the microbial cause of many diseases, later to be affected dramatically by the discovery of penicillin by Fleming.
Medical research has always been at somewhat of disadvantage. The only way to be sure that a remedy for a disease works is to test it on human subjects, but it was considered ethically irresponsible to test blindly on humans. That is why so much of medical research depends now on animal experiments before testing on human volunteers.
"Arrowsmith" explores this conflict at its epicenter: a doctor who crosses one line from practice into research and another line from attempting to cure to blind testing on humans. This leads to tragic personal consequences for the protagonist in the film. Big medical research gets no love here as the film portrays the research foundation as a heartless, results-oriented, publicity-seeking organization. This is a valid point of view in some circumstances, but it dismisses the great difficulty involved in deriving treatments for disease that are both effective and safe.
I was disappointed by Ronald Colman's performance as Dr Arrowsmith. He had daring moments in hitting on Helen Hayes in a hospital corridor, but then had a strangely bloodless romantic relationship with her thereafter, even as he's holding her dead body. Even his relationship with his research, beyond working on a serum to cure the disease affecting the cattle in his North Dakota home, seemed very detached. Helen Hayes had a very innocuous role as Arrowsmith's wife, clinging and not offering much in the way of personal life. A E Anson as Prof. Gottlieb played a stereotypical Hollywood scientist, all rigor and no humanity. Myrna Loy had a throwaway role as a Joyce Lanyon, who was to be Arrowsmith's second wife -- but this segment of the novel was dropped, and for some odd reason the final scene with Loy was never cut, although it should have been.
At the time of Arrowsmith, typical medical practice was mainly a primitive venture, outside of surgery and bone-mending. Quacks abounded dealing with disease. Pasteur changed all that by discovering the microbial cause of many diseases, later to be affected dramatically by the discovery of penicillin by Fleming.
Medical research has always been at somewhat of disadvantage. The only way to be sure that a remedy for a disease works is to test it on human subjects, but it was considered ethically irresponsible to test blindly on humans. That is why so much of medical research depends now on animal experiments before testing on human volunteers.
"Arrowsmith" explores this conflict at its epicenter: a doctor who crosses one line from practice into research and another line from attempting to cure to blind testing on humans. This leads to tragic personal consequences for the protagonist in the film. Big medical research gets no love here as the film portrays the research foundation as a heartless, results-oriented, publicity-seeking organization. This is a valid point of view in some circumstances, but it dismisses the great difficulty involved in deriving treatments for disease that are both effective and safe.
I was disappointed by Ronald Colman's performance as Dr Arrowsmith. He had daring moments in hitting on Helen Hayes in a hospital corridor, but then had a strangely bloodless romantic relationship with her thereafter, even as he's holding her dead body. Even his relationship with his research, beyond working on a serum to cure the disease affecting the cattle in his North Dakota home, seemed very detached. Helen Hayes had a very innocuous role as Arrowsmith's wife, clinging and not offering much in the way of personal life. A E Anson as Prof. Gottlieb played a stereotypical Hollywood scientist, all rigor and no humanity. Myrna Loy had a throwaway role as a Joyce Lanyon, who was to be Arrowsmith's second wife -- but this segment of the novel was dropped, and for some odd reason the final scene with Loy was never cut, although it should have been.