For people who like to stir in old bookstores there are a series of titles that are continually repeated. Moreover, it seems that there is no way to take them off, as if they chase us in each search. One of those titles we owe it to the Scottish novelist Archibald Joseph Cronin (1896-1981) and it is the novel entitled The citadel.
In her we are told the adventures of a young doctor since her arrival in a mining community of Wales; A rural scenario where he will face the different diseases of its inhabitants. We are not going to reveal the plot, just say that it is a brochure with Dickensian echoes and very well drawn characters, of those who endure the imaginary.
Actually, the entire novel is a catalog of diseases and remedies, from pyrexia, that is, fever, to doubts that arise when it comes to applying the medication. Given uncertainty, the young doctor recipe hydrochloric acid, essential acid when digesting protein, since, activates the enzyme that breaks down the proteins in peptides and is known as Pepsin. Already put, the young doctor also solves drop problems with centenary treatments such as the bulb of the eclochemus, a plant that contains a poison with antimitotic properties called mattchicin. Although its use does not eradicate the gout, attenuates the symptoms and prevents the outbreaks of this disease, a form of arthritis that is due to the accumulation of uric acid crystals in the joints, especially in the hallux, popularly known as the big toe of the foot.
However, the young doctor is going to specialize in lung diseases, attending to silicosis, an irreversible evil that miners suffer, and whose root is found in silica dust deposits that originate in the lungs. As there is no treatment, inhaled silica for long periods of time remains in the body, fulfilling a significant role in lung cancer. Not only miners are exposed to silica, their toxicity also reaches the lungs of people who work the ornamental stone.
According to a recent report from the Ministry of Health, silicosis resurfaces in our country with intensity. Its increase is worrying, especially after a fiction like the citadel penetrates our consciousness.
For continuing with the novel – and with its author – it must be noted that Cronin exercised as a rural doctor in the mining area of Wales, investigating patterns of pulmonary diseases. Without a doubt, experience served to develop his work. But that was years after being used as a surgeon in the Royal Navy, after the outbreak of the great war.
Delivered to humanism, like the protagonist of the novel, Cronin’s experiences become a map where the compass of the
Literature will mark the course to follow. He will not be the only doctor who dedicates himself to novelty his life, but that does not take away the pleasant surprise of finding copies of a novel like The citadel flooding old libraries.
The stone ax It is a section where Montero Glezwith the will of prose, it exercises its particular siege to scientific reality to state that science and art are complementary forms of knowledge.
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