The Medicus

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The Medicus (English original title: The Physician ) is a historical novel by the American writer Noah Gordon .

The American original edition The Physician was published in 1986 by Simon & Schuster , New York . It is the first volume in a trilogy that deals with the fictional medical dynasty of the Cole family. The book describes the historical development of the medical profession in an era in Europe. The German first edition was published in 1987 by Verlag Droemer Knaur in a translation by Willy Thaler. The second volume of the trilogy is The Shaman , the third volume The Heirs of the Medicus .

action

The novel is about the young Robert Jeremy Cole (Rob Cole for short), who grew up in London in the first quarter of the 11th century . When his parents died within a short time, he was accepted as an orphan by a bath surgeon as an apprentice and learned the art of healing with him. His determination to help other people gave rise to his desire to find the best teacher for his training as a doctor. He is helped by his gift of feeling the near death of a patient in his hands. This gift is even inherited and also plays a role in the subsequent volumes.

After the bather's death, Rob is left to his own devices and learns to appreciate the skills of a Jewish medicus named Benjamin Merlin . However, although Merlin recognizes Rob's talent and desire to learn to heal, he does not accept him as an apprentice, as the church would not allow it. However, Merlin tells him about a great healer named Ibn Sina, called Avicenna . He teaches medicine at a madrassa , a school for medicine in distant Isfahan . But Rob can not be admitted to this school as a Christian . When a second Jewish medicus also rejects him as an apprentice, Rob decides to pretend to be a Jew in order to be allowed to attend this school. He sets out on the long journey to Persia and joins a caravan in Bohemia to Constantinople.

On the way he met the Scotsman James Cullen and his daughter Mary , but also a group of traveling Jewish traders. He spends the winter with the Jews in a village in the Balkans, learning Persian and observing the customs and behavior of the Jews as far as he can. After almost two years of traveling, he finally arrives in Persia disguised as the Jew "Jesse ben Benjamin", named after the medicus Benjamin Merlin. Mary and her father left the caravan before Constantinople after Rob turned down an offer to become a shepherd and Mary's husband.

Despite initial difficulties, he was accepted as a student at the medical faculty and studied there with two new friends until Ibn Sina was killed by an illness during a campaign. Mary and her father also appear in Persia, but James Cullen dies, and when Mary thinks of traveling to England with a caravan, Rob spontaneously marries her with a handshake. His two friends, the Persian Karim Harun and the Jew Mirdin Askari, perish as a result of decisions or omissions of the difficult to predict ruler of Persia, Ala Schahansha. Rob is also in mortal danger in his disguise as a Jew, as his true religion is known to some people. As a doctor and scholar, he eventually returned to their home country of Scotland with Mary and two children in order to be happy there.

Facts and fiction

The multifaceted portrayal of life in a pre-Enlightenment world often looks like a factual report; however, the world depicted in the novel contains many historical inaccuracies. For example, the city of Strasbourg is assigned to France , although it was part of the Duchy of Swabia at the time. Countries and cities that did not exist at the time or were called differently are traversed, for example Turkey , although these areas were then part of the Byzantine and Seljuk empires. The description of stone castles in England is not historical either, since such castles in England were only built after the conquest by William the Conqueror and initially also from wood and only in the course of the next centuries from stone. In addition, the names Robert and Jeremy are of Norman origin; however, the protagonist lives at a time when England was ruled by the Danes and was still generally Anglo-Saxon. The naming Cole is accordingly incorrect, as this is only derived from Middle English and Old French . Apart from that, there was no feudalism and accordingly no guild system in pre-Norman England , although Rob Cole's father is said to have been a member of one.

After the worldwide extinction of the Justinian plague strain around 770, there was no known occurrence of the plague in global history , as the novel describes it for Persia , until the occurrence of the black death with the strain of pathogen that still exists today in 1346 . The outbreak of the plague described in the book thus falls in the middle of an epoch-free epoch that has actually lasted over 500 years.

In this respect, the novel largely describes a medieval fantasy world rather than the historically correct real world of the 11th century. This is also confirmed by Noah Gordon himself in the afterword.

effect

Gordon's books have appeared in 42 countries. The medicus sold better in Europe than in Noah Gordon's native USA. The German translation alone has sold more than six million copies. In 1999 the book was named one of the ten most popular books of all time at the Madrid Book Fair.

Noah Gordon wrote two sequels: Shaman (German: The Shaman ) and Matters Of Choice (German: The Heirs of the Medicus ), which, however, could not build on the success of their predecessor. His novel The Last Jew , published in 2000, was published in Germany under the title Der Medicus von Saragossa , but its content has nothing to do with the Medicus .

expenditure

Books

  • Noah Gordon: The medicus. Translation by Willy Thaler, 1st edition, Droemer Knaur, Munich 1987, ISBN 3-426-19192-X
  • Noah Gordon: The medicus. Translation by Ulrike Wasel and Klaus Timmermann, 1st edition, Blessing, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-89667-010-7

Audio books

filming

The book was filmed in summer 2012 under the direction of Philipp Stölzl . Tom Payne , Ben Kingsley and Olivier Martinez play the leading roles . The official start of the film was December 25, 2013.

literature

  • Gerhard Fouquet : Place 7, Noah Gordon: The Medicus , in: Christoph Juergensen (ed.): The Favorite Books of the Germans, Verlag Ludwig, Kiel 2006, pp. 216-239, ISBN 3-937719-34-2 .
  • Albert Meier: Noah Gordon, The Physician / The Medicus. In: Hans-Edwin Friedrich (Ed.): The historical novel. Exploring a popular genus. Frankfurt am Main 2013 (= contributions to literature and literary studies of the 20th and 21st centuries. Volume 23), pp. 189–199.
  • Ortrun Riha : Medical history in the form of a novel. (Review) In: Würzburger medizinhistorische Mitteilungen 12, 1994, pp. 397-400.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ UFA CINEMA filmed the bestseller DER MEDICUS under the direction of Philipp Stölzl at ufa.de, accessed on October 25, 2012
  2. ↑ filmstarts.de Official film launch The Medicus