Subject Makes Frank Slaughter's DAYBREAK a Timeless Read

With thousands of new books being published each year, why would one decide to read DAYBREAK, by Frank G. Slaughter, a book published in 1958, over a half-century ago? Well it came about this way.

During the first evening of our recent stormy weather in Tidewater Virginia, I finished reading my last book from the library by using a battery-powered reading lamp. The storm’s high winds had disrupted electrical power. The next day, flood waters made a trip to the library impossible.

In desperation, I used a flashlight to rummage through a long neglected collection of books in a back hallway bookcase. That’s how I came to read a book that is a perfect epilogue to the current state of the medical profession and the techno-medical-thrillers being written today.

There are two things that need to be emphasized at this point. Frank G. Slaughter knew his subject matter. Born in Washington, D.C., he grew up near Oxford, North Carolina, and attended Duke University. He received his medical degree from Johns Hopkins Medical School in Baltimore, Maryland, plus four years of surgical training at the Jefferson Hospital, Roanoke, Virginia.

In 1938, he became a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons. In 1940, he received his certification as a Specialist in Surgery by the American Board of Surgery. He served in the United States Medical Corps during WW II, reaching the rank of lieutenant colonel.

Slaughter was also a very successful author. He began his writing career at the age of twenty-seven. Six years and five rewrites later, his first novel, THAT NONE SHOULD DIE, was published in 1941. When he died in 2001, his thirty-five books had sold some 60 million copies worldwide.

It has been written that as an author, Slaughter “drew on his own experience as a physician. He often introduced readers to exciting findings in medical research and new inventions in medical technology.” This is what makes DAYBREAK such an interesting read at the present time when the extensive use of drugs to control mental illness is both lauded and questioned.

At the time DAYBREAK was published, there were only two accepted cures for certain types of mental illness⎯electric shock, or a lobotomy. The latter procedure stripped from patients the tendency for violent behavior, but let them little more than robots. The use of drugs as a treatment was still in the early days of development. Very little testing had been done.

The plot in the book is straightforward. A fledgling brain surgeon, an intern at a mental hospital where he has undergone training in lobotomies, loses his wife in an automobile accident and the competition for a highly desired residency. To escape his fate, he signs on as ship’s doctor on a sea-going freighter that also carries passengers.

One of the passengers, a young woman, requires emergency surgery, which the doctor performs on board the ship. Afterwards, the doctor realizes she is also suffering mental problems, and makes arrangements for her to travel back to the United States for treatment.

By the time his tour as ship’s doctor has ended, he learns the young woman has suffered a complete breakdown, is schizophrenic, and has been institutionalized in a state hospital because of lack of family funds. The public institution where she is confined needs a doctor trained to perform lobotomies, but refuses to pay for a specialist. Needing a job and still carrying an infatuation for the young woman since their time together on-board ship, the doctor accepts the institution's offer of employment.

In his new position, the doctor performs dozens of lobotomies each week, converting violent patients into docile workers for jobs the institution’s various occupational areas. But he steadfastly refuses to perform a lobotomy on the young woman with whom he is now openly and madly in love. Risking his medical career and the possibility of her death, the doctor turns to unproven drugs. The risk is heightened when the institution's director issues a time-framed edict. Cure her or perform a lobotomy.

With the introduction of drugs as a possible cure, the book’s story line becomes a debate among the doctors at the mental institution about the known value and benefits of lobotomies vs. the unproven use of drugs.

Reading this, from the perspective of today, in light of what we now know about the treatments for mental illness, gives a unique chance to evaluate the thinking on both sides of the debate in the 1950s.

This look back into medical time also reveals the constant battle physicians face. Do they stick with the devil they know or risk their professional future and the well being of their patients on one they do not? This gives DAYBREAK a timeless quality that makes it as relevant as one of today’s medical best sellers.