A Lesson in Anatomy

THE DOCTOR AND THE DEVILS (138 pp.)--Dylan Thomas--New Directions ($2.50).

Like most poets, Welshman Dylan Thomas can't afford to think of poetry as a living. To eke out his own, he does what he can in other writing fields. And he is certainly among the few living poets, not to mention scenario writers, who could successfully have written The Doctor and the Devils, the screenplay for a new British film.* Published as a book, his script combines some of the best virtues of fiction and drama. What is just as important, Poet Thomas remains a poet while doing a job that most highbrow poets would pooh-pooh, unless it were offered to them.

Here is the true story that Thomas got to work with: more than a century ago, there lived in Edinburgh a brilliant professor of anatomy named Dr. Knox. Like most anatomists of the day, he lacked enough corpses for his demonstrations. Like his colleagues, he was forced to buy them from body snatchers. Two snatchers. Burke and Hare, decided it was easier to murder their "subjects" than to dig them up. They were caught and brought to trial. Dr. Knox had enough influence to escape trial, and to this day it is not sure that he 'knew what Burke and Hare were up to; but his name became a curse among the poor, he was ostracized, and he finally fled his native city.

Enemies Preferred. Poet Thomas goes to work. Dr. Knox (to allow the script wider latitude) becomes Dr. Rock. The reader meets him first on a morning walk, wielding "his stick like a prophet's staff . . . the wide, sensual mouth tightened into its own denial." He is a sharp-tongued, arrogant genius, always at odds with his colleagues, the newspapers, society in general. His creed on the lecture stand: "Let no scruples stand in the way of the progress of medical science." His personal credo: "I do not need any friends. I prefer enemies. They are better company, and their feelings towards you are always genuine." By his own admission, he has paid body snatchers, or "Resurrectionists," as much as 500 guineas a term.

Now he begins to get a flow of corpses from two lodginghouse keepers in the most wretched part of the city. At first, the two bully boys, Fallon and Broom, simply smother their lodgers in their beds. Later, the victims are made drunk and done away with as was young Jennie Bailey, the prostitute:

Fallon: I got two more bottles in my little room, Miss Pretty Bailey. Two great bottles of dancin' dew that'll make you think the sun's shining in the middle of the night.

Fingers for Death. When Dr. Rock's own assistant accuses him of hiring murderers, Rock intones: "I need bodies. They brought bodies. I pay for what I need. I do not hire murderers." To his wife he is able to report: "I am full of bliss, like a cat on the tiles of heaven."

But the jig is about up. Dr. Rock has his last joke about Fallon and Broom: "They are corpse-diviners. Or, as some have green fingers for gardening, so they have black fingers for death." Then the police, the trial, disgrace. Dr. Rock himself is saved from trial by influential colleagues who have had dealings with body snatchers themselves. But life in Edinburgh is hardly bearable for a man, how ever innocent, when the desperately poor sing in the streets:

Fallon and Broom sell bones and meat . . . Fallon's the butcher, Broom's the

thief . . . And Rock's the boy who buys the

beef . . .

And at the very end Rock admits inwardly: "Oh, my God, I knew what I was doing!" Poet Thomas has done more than give dramatic shape to a bit of grisly history. In dialogue and camera directions, he has proved again that a first-rate writer can give dignity to the most sordid materials. And, true poet that he is, he has spoken out for the dignity of human life without getting his characters to make tiresome speeches about it.

-Which is to be released early next year. The film's current title: Doctor in the House.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.