The Primeval Forest

Erscheinungsjahr 1998
ISBN: 978-0-8018-5958-8
Verlag: Johns Hopkins University Press

Buch, Englisch, 240 Seiten, Format (B × H): 140 mm x 216 mm, Gewicht: 350 g

Reihe: The Albert Schweitzer Library

"There, in this sorry world of ours, goes a great man."—Albert Einstein, on Albert Schweitzer

In July of 1913, thirty-eight-year-old medical doctor Albert Schweitzer gave up his position as a respected professor at the University of Strasbourg and celebrated authority on music and philosophy in order to go as a physician to French Equatorial Africa (present-day Gabon). The Primeval Forest is Schweitzer's own fascinating story of these eventful years—a thrilling tale of his amazingly successful attempt to practice modern medicine and surgery in the face of wild elephant raids, marauding leopards, famine, an flood—a story rich in human interest and high drama.

Schweitzer describes how he and his wife, a qualified nurse, worked to establish a hospital in the steaming jungle at Lambaréné. At first they treated patients in the open air, amid unbelievably primitive conditions—with few drugs, medicines, or adequate instruments. But they worked tirelessly, caring for as many as forty cases a day, battling the misery caused by sleeping sickness, leprosy, pestilence, and plague. And, as the years went on, they gradually built a more permanent hospital to alleviate the terrible suffering of the Congo people.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Schweitzer, Albert

Weitere Mitwirkende

Foege, William H.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Schreiben und Publizieren, Kreatives Schreiben

Über Autor(innen)

Foege, William H.
William H. Foege is the emeritus presidential distinguished professor of international health at Emory University. He was a director of the Centers for Disease Control, the founding director of the Carter Presidential Center, and a cofounder of the Task Force for Child Survival (now the Task Force for Global Health). He was also an early consultant to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He is the author of House on Fire: The Fight to Eradicate Smallpox; The Fears of the Rich, the Needs of the Poor: My Years at the CDC; The Task Force for Child Survival: Secrets of Successful Coalitions; and a coauthor of Change Is Possible: Reflections on the History of Global Health. In 2012, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Schweitzer, Albert
Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1952. Although he was highly gifted in science, theology, and music and as an author, Schweitzer dedicated the last six decades of his life to medicine and to a hospital he founded with his wife, Helene Breslau, in French Equatorial Africa, the Albert Schweitzer Hospital in Lambaréné, Gabon. A true humanitarian, he used his Nobel Prize stipend to expand the hospital and to build new facilities for leprosy patients. The Johns Hopkins University Press published several of Schweitzer's books, including The Quest of the Historical Jesus, The Primeval Forest, and The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle.

Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965) won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1952. While still a young man he demonstrated extraordinary abilities in a wide range of pursuits, including science, theology, and music. In 1908 he published his magisterial study of the life and works of Johann Sebastian Bach. He studied medicine from 1905 to 1913 at the University of Strasbourg, then founded a hospital in French Equatorial Africa, where he spent most of the remainder of his life. Schweitzer used his Nobel Prize stipend to expand the hospital and to build a leper colony. His bookThe Quest of the Historical Jesus is also available from Johns Hopkins.