The Citadel..." The Australian Women's Weekly, (9 October 1937) Vol.5 # 18, begin serialization. [19] Vigil in the Night, directed by George Stevens, featuring Carole Lombard, Brian Aherne, Anne Shirley, and Robert Coote

The wider ramifications of books such as The Citadel are also worth considering as a resource for teaching and learning. In the 1980s, while teaching medical ethics with Professor Robin Downie (Professor of Moral Philosophy) in Glasgow, we introduced students to literature to emphasise the broader dimensions of medicine. 3 These were poems, plays, stories and novels, all of which raised issues of the practice of medicine and health. They provided a forum for discussion and debate and encouraged reflection and the ability to articulate views. Thus literature can provide a focus for considering one’s own clinical practice and how personal views on clinical issues amongst doctors can vary. In addition, books, poems and plays can highlight issues related to the social determinants of health-poverty, employment and housing, and can demonstrate very effectively problems in lifestyle and their impact on well-being. For example there are some very powerful images created on issues of drunkenness and cigarette smoking, and the problems of HIV infection and its causation. Such texts can all be used to help the professions learn about such issues. This process has widened into the arts and humanities generally and there are now numerous organisations and at least one journal covering this area. The use of theatre, dance, the visual arts and creative writing can all improve well-being and happiness.Dr. Manson also has less positive characteristics that affect his personal and professional choices. Besides being a skilled doctor dedicated to his patient’s welfare, he is also overly proud and competitive. Many of the dramatic events revolve around which of these traits take prominence in Dr. Manson’s personal and career choices. I found myself often thinking of how pride is one of the seven deadly sins. I do like that Dr. Manson is portrayed as not overly heroic but as a man with faults. The reader will not always like Dr. Manson or his choices. However, I did find some of the switches in which of Dr. Manson’s traits became prominent to be a bit abrupt and melodramatic. Beyond This Place ( CBS), featuring Farley Granger, Peggy Ann Garner, Max Adrian, Brian Donlevy, and Shelley Winters Rivett GC. From Cradle to Grave, the first 50 years of the NHS. London: King’s Fund and www.nhshistory.net

All of which leads me to point out that “The Citadel” is a novel that was very consciously intended to make a point, namely that the British medical system of Cronin’s day was badly in need of reform. It was a closed shop of self-seeking, poorly educated, change-averse charlatans. Indeed, the book turned out to be a ground-breaking publication that significantly influenced the creation of the British National Health a few years later. Accordingly, it must be judged in terms of its success in that sphere, as a social and political document as much as on its merit as a novel.Annan N. Our Age: The Generation That Made Post-war Britain. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson; 1990. Simply put, this is the story of a doctor's assistant who gets an appointment in Wales to help an MD in a mining village. However, when he arrives, he finds that the MD has been incapacitated from a stroke and he must carry on without him. From there, he starts specializing in diseases of the lungs, gets his MD licence, works his way up the corporal ladder and very nearly sells his soul in his quest to "be someone". Manson is constantly fighting an uphill battle, not only against the medical superstitions of the uneducated townspeople, but also the ignorance, incompetence, and greed of the medical professionals he encounters. When he is finally able to obtain a new job in the nearby town of Aberalaw, he marries Christine, the idealistic schoolteacher who he has been seeing, and they leave together. Dacă persistăm, încercând doar să dovedim că toate merg de minune în meseria noastră, și că, în afară de meseria noastră, nu mai există nimic bun - atunci, într-adevăr, aceasta înseamnă moartea progresului științific." Watt G. The Citadel: A Potent Reminder of Life Before the NHS. BJGP Library: Br J Gen Pract. 2015;65(638):480

The program was partly filmed on location in Tredegar, Wales, where A. J. Cronin practised as a doctor with the Tredegar Medical Aid Society prior to writing the novel, as well as in Merthyr Tydfil, Garlane House in Beaufort, Blaenau Gwent, in Wales and Prague. His experience with the Tredegar Medical Aid Society shaped the "Aberalaw" section of the novel. [2] Reception [ edit ] The Stars Look Down, set in the North East of England, is another of his best-selling novels inspired by his work among miners. Both novels have been filmed, as have Hatter's Castle, The Keys of the Kingdom and The Green Years. His 1935 novella Country Doctor inspired a long-running BBC radio and TV series, Dr. Finlay's Casebook (1962–1971), set in the 1920s. There was a follow-up series in 1993–1996. [4] Early life [ edit ] Rosebank Cottage, Cronin's birthplace Daniel Boffey. The Guardian: Health Policy. Timeline of UK’s coronavirus PPE shortage. (13 Apr 2020). It is claimed, with some justification, that the book strongly influenced the result of the 1945 British general election, when the voters rejected the war hero Churchill in favour of the less charismatic social reformer, the Labour leader Attlee. This Labour government established the NHS in 1948. The seeds of the NHS were sown in Tredegar, home town of the NHS’s architect, Aneurin Bevan. Cronin spent three formative years in this town (“Aberlaw” in The Citadel). The Medical Aid Societies set up by the Miners’ unions in South Wales inspired Bevan to extend free health care to the entire nation. In Adventures in Two Worlds, Cronin says: “In actual fact this scheme can definitely be regarded as the foundation of the plan of socialized medicine which was eventually adopted by Great Britain. Aneurin Bevan, who was mainly responsible for the national project, and at one time a miner at Tredegar, and here, under the local aid organization, the value of prompt and gratuitous treatment for the worker was strongly impressed upon him.” Launching the NHS, Bevan said: “All I am doing is extending to the entire population of Britain the benefits we had in Tredegar for a generation or more. We are going to “Tredegarise” you”8. Bevan and Cronin are not known to have met, but, given their mutual connections with Tredegar and their fame, it would seem highly likely that they did.Some of Cronin's novels also deal with religion, which he had grown away from during his medical training and career, but with which he became reacquainted in the 1930s. At medical school, as he recounts in his autobiography, he had become an agnostic: "When I thought of God it was with a superior smile, indicative of biological scorn for such an outworn myth." During his practice in Wales, however, the deep religious faith of the people he worked among made him start to wonder whether "the compass of existence held more than my text-books had revealed, more than I had ever dreamed of. In short I lost my superiority, and this, though I was not then aware of it, is the first step towards finding God." By telling this magnificent story, the author built a great fiction masterpiece. That’s why he is considered with great justice as one most great writers of the 20th century fiction.

Grand Canary, directed by Irving Cummings, featuring Warner Baxter, Madge Evans, Marjorie Rambeau, Zita Johann, and H. B. Warner Cronin may have used the citadel as a metaphor to describe Britain’s dire healthcare situation of his time, but a more optimistic interpretation is that he saw the grand citadel as a vision of what healthcare in Britain could aspire to become.Episode 5: Andrew informs Dr Llewellyn that he intends to meet with the other medical assistants that evening and that he expects them to join forces in refusing to pay 20% of their income to him. However, to Andrew's dismay, during the meeting that follows he fails to gain the necessary support from his fellow medical assistants. In his despair at the hopelessness of his situation, Christine convinces Andrew to study for the M.R.C.P. qualification offering to help him with the language proficiency requirements. The arduous combination of work and study is stressful to Andrew, who takes his frustrations out on Christine. However, he travels to London and sits the examinations where his oral examiners are Sir Robert Abbey and Dr. Maurice Gadsby (both of whom feature again later in the series). He passes. Immediately on his return from London he is called to an accident in the mine, where, under dangerous and challenging circumstances, he amputates the trapped leg of a miner. Christine informs Andrew that she is pregnant. One morning, five months into her pregnancy, she mentions to Andrew that she is worried about the state of the bridge, and Andrew promises to ask the committee to do something about it. However, the bridge collapses when Christine is crossing it. Whilst Christine does not appear to suffer significant injuries to herself, she miscarries the baby and Dr. Llewellyn informs Andrew that she is unlikely to ever bear another child. Andrew's research into silicosis in anthracite workers is progressing well, and he applies for an M.D. on the basis of his thesis. His experiments involve testing silica on [guinea pigs, and there are local complaints about vivisection for which Andrew has no licence. An official from the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals comes and seizes the guinea pigs, and Andrew is brought before the local Committee under threat of dismissal. In his defence Andrew informs the committee that the blood they reported to have seen in his home laboratory was simply a chemical that he had spilt. He compares the continued use of white mice and canaries down the mine to his use of guinea pigs – both examples of sacrificing the lives of animals to save those of humans. Furthermore, he states that if his research is successful then miners and their families who suffer because of silicosis would have the benefit of receiving compensation. The committee votes, and the majority decision is that he should stay in his role. Andrew's response is to resign his position. He informs Christine that they will live in London instead. A Thing of Beauty (novel, 1956), ISBN 0-515-03379-0; also published as Crusader's Tomb (1956), ISBN 0-450-01394-4 Desmonde (novel, 1975), ISBN 0-316-16163-2; also published as The Minstrel Boy (1975), ISBN 0-450-03279-5 During the First World War, Cronin served as a surgeon sub-lieutenant in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve before graduating from medical school. After the war he trained at hospitals that included Bellahouston Hospital and Lightburn Hospital in Glasgow and the Rotunda Hospital in Dublin. He undertook general practice at Garelochhead, a village on the River Clyde, and in Tredegar, a mining town in South Wales. In 1924 he was appointed Medical Inspector of Mines for Great Britain. His survey of medical regulations in collieries and his reports on the correlation between coal-dust inhalation and pulmonary disease were published over the next few years. Cronin drew on his medical experience and research into the occupational hazards of the mining industry for his later novels – The Citadel, set in Wales, and The Stars Look Down, set in Northumberland. He subsequently moved to London, where he practised in Harley Street before opening a busy medical practice of his own in Notting Hill. Cronin was also the medical officer for the Whiteleys department store at the time and had an increasing interest in ophthalmology.