Do doctors dream of electric typewriters?

For those of us who like to rummage through secondhand bookstores, there are a number of titles that are constantly repeated. In fact, it seems there's no way to get rid of them, as if they're chasing us every time we search. One of these titles belongs to the Scottish novelist Archibald Joseph Cronin (1896-1981), a novel titled The Citadel .

It tells the story of a young doctor upon his arrival in a Welsh mining community, a rural setting where he must confront the various illnesses of its inhabitants. We won't reveal the plot; we'll just say that it's a serial novel with Dickensian overtones and beautifully drawn characters, the kind that live on in the imagination.

In reality, the entire novel is a catalog of diseases and remedies , from pyrexia, or fever, to the doubts that arise when it comes to applying the medicine. Faced with uncertainty, the young doctor prescribes hydrochloric acid , an essential acid when it comes to digesting proteins, since it activates the enzyme that breaks down proteins into peptides, known as pepsin. While he's at it, the young doctor also solves gout problems with centuries-old treatments such as the bulb of the colchicine, a plant that contains a poison with antimitotic properties called colchicine. Although its use does not eradicate gout, it alleviates the symptoms and prevents flare-ups of this disease, a form of arthritis caused by the accumulation of uric acid crystals in the joints, especially in the hallux, popularly known as the big toe.

However, the young doctor will specialize in lung diseases , treating silicosis, an irreversible disease suffered by miners, whose root cause is silica dust deposits that form in the lungs. Without treatment, silica inhaled for long periods remains in the body, playing a significant role in lung cancer . Not only miners are exposed to silica; its toxicity also reaches the lungs of people who work with ornamental stone.

According toa recent report from the Ministry of Health , silicosis is resurfacing in our country with intensity. This increase is worrying, especially after a fictional show like The Citadel has entered our consciousness.

Continuing with the novel—and its author—it's worth noting that Cronin worked as a rural doctor in the mining area of ​​Wales, researching patterns of lung disease. Undoubtedly, his experience served him well in developing his work. But that was years after he had been employed as a surgeon in the Royal Navy, following the outbreak of the Great War .

Dedicated to humanism, just like the protagonist of the novel, Cronin's experiences become a map where the compass of the

Literature will set the course. He won't be the only doctor to dedicate himself to fictionalizing his life, but that doesn't take away from the pleasant surprise of finding copies of a novel like The Citadel flooding used bookstores.

The Stone Axe is a section where Montero Glez , with a desire for prose, exercises his particular siege on scientific reality to demonstrate that science and art are complementary forms of knowledge.