The Doctor and His Enemy

London: Michael Joseph, 1965. 1st Edition. Hardcover. Near Fine/Near Fine. 12mo - over 6¾ - 7¾" tall. Orig. purple paper boards. 213 pp. Small black stain to rear board, fading to top edge and spine foot. Spine tilted. Dust jacket is lightly worn to spine ends and corners, some toning to flaps and rear cover. The roots of the Second World War lay, not in Sarajevo in 1914, but in a Viennese dosshouse in April 1910. In that year three young men whose poverty forced them to live there shared among them a young Jewish prostitute. She was afflicted with syphilis and transferred the disease to all three of her customers, The three young men were all affected in different ways, but in one of them the base of the brain was attacked early in the course of the disease, turning him into a megalomaniac with a pathological hatred of Jews. His name was Adolf Hitler. This is the opinion of one of the times' leading specialists in venereology and sexology, whose life story is told in this book. The doctor has every reason to authenticate the details the details of Hitler's infection, for he personally met the two men who were infected at the same time. He has many other astonishing revelations to make, both personal and medical. This is not only a history of one of the world's oldest scourges, and of its devastating effects on such famous people as Nietzsche, Swift, Schumann, Schubert, Beethoven, Napoleon and Maupassant (and by definition on the political and aesthetic history of the world). It is the life of one of the most brilliant students of a famous hospital.