December 1959
So much has been written about Schweitzer’s hospital at Lambaréné that it has become difficult to have a clear picture of the place or the man who made it, but Dr. Franck, who went there for some months to practise much-needed dental surgery, has managed to produce a refreshing, interesting and convincing account. He admits that he arrived there stuffed with misconceptions: he seems to have left impressed, devoted and glad of his experience. The hospital is not modern in the technical sense of that word, but no one is ever turned away, and after forty-five years Schweitzer sustains a complete personal responsibility for every one of his staff, patients and guests. The qualities of his compassion and love of all life infect everybody: the staff, whose energy and endurance is far above the general standard; the patients, whose belief in his concern for them provides the reliable factor that is so often needed for their recovery; the guests, who are allowed to be generous, silly, inquisitive or vulgar, with such courtesy that they may even see themselves as they are seen. Dr. Franck likens Schweitzer to a Groszbauer (great peasant): the hospital, leper village, vegetable garden, children and animals are all his farm or kingdom, and in it he functions as doctor, teacher, pastor, and musician; but he has succeeded in lifting all these capacities far beyond any parochial autocracy. ‘The crucial fact about Albert Schweitzer, and that which makes his long life into a profound message to every man, is that in the face of all obstacles a man succeeded so absolutely in developing every one of his potentialities to its utmost limit.’ This is Franck about the doctor; what strikes one even more is the way in which, by his energy and influence, Schweitzer has managed to create a climate where all kinds of people - seriously stricken lepers, people apparently incapacitated in body and mind, etc. - are enabled to live in such a way that they can develop their own uses and beauties. Dr. Franck is particularly good in his written portraits of these people for whom he had a very clear understanding, but the whole book is written by somebody who not only seems professionally well informed but has also a good heart.