AAMC Reporter: August 2007

On the River of Knowledge

K. Patrick Ober next to statue of Mark Twain

Most people consider a cereal box a container for the breakfast grains held within. But for Mark Twain scholar K. Patrick Ober, M.D., F.A.C.S., the exterior itself was the crucial ingredient. More specifically, it was a coupon printed on the cardboard box that landed him his first book, a hardcover copy of "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn."

Ober, a professor of internal medicine at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, said that a 1950s General Mills campaign gave literary classics to those who mailed in the coupon with a dollar bill. Ober's mother sent these in on his behalf, and soon thereafter Huck Finn arrived for young Patrick.

Ober was hooked on Huck. As a child in small town Conrad, Iowa, Ober said he could relate to the adventurous protagonist.

"My dad took my brother and me fishing in Wolf Creek, which ran through Conrad. I had fantasies of building my own raft and becoming a modern-day Huckleberry Finn," said Ober. "It never came about."

Over the years, Ober's interest grew. He read all Twain's books and visited his childhood house in Hannibal, Mo., as well as other places where Twain lived and wrote.

Twain's humor and humanism are what appeal to Ober about his works.

"Twain had the ability to tell the world what was important about the human condition. He was able to recognize disastrous things that people were overlooking and actually suggest some improvements," said Ober.

Recently, Ober combined Mark Twain with his other passion: medicine. Intrigued with how medical topics such as faith-based cures and the placebo effect pervaded Twain's life and literature, Ober wrote a book exploring the issue.

Ober believes that a familiarity with literature and humanities can help doctors take care of patients.

"Literature brings us into contact with a lot of other perspectives and viewpoints. It gives us a broad vision of the human condition. The better one understands human beings, the better one can do what is best for them."

—Elissa Fuchs

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