Tap Dancing, Babies, and Cadavers: Humor and Pathos in the Life of 20th-Century Doctor

In Tap Dancing, Babies, and Cadavers: Humor and Pathos in the Life of a 20th-Century Doctor, retired OB/GYN Don R. Krohn chronicles his journey from boyhood in small-town Nebraska to military high school in Indiana to medical school in Michigan. His humorous, often poignant true-life tales reflect on medical practice in the 1950s and 1960s, when young doctors modeled the fashions of TV physician Ben Casey and nervous fathers-to-be paced back and forth in a designated Fathers Waiting Room. In stories such as “A Grand Impression,” Krohn describes growing up in the Great Depression, when a young boy’s pride in receiving his first pair of Levi’s swiftly turns into a mortifying disaster. Humiliation takes on new heights in “My Brief Stint as a Tap Dancer,” in which young Krohn’s mother enrolls him in an all-girl tap dancing class. In “A Difficult Patient,” Krohn describes how an encounter with a particularly exasperating patient made him a better doctor.