conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is a plot for a book about Manson, Page, Medical entitled The Citadel?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Citadel (novel): In October 1924, Andrew Manson, an idealistic, newly qualified doctor, arrives from Scotland to work as assistant to Doctor Page in the small (fictitious) Welsh mining town of Drineffy (Blaenelly is the name given in some adaptations).\nHe quickly realises that Page is invalid and that he has to do all the work for a meagre wage.\nShocked by the unsanitary conditions he finds, he works to improve matters and receives the support of Dr Philip Denny, a cynical semi-alcoholic who has, Manson finds in due course, taken a post as an assistant doctor after having fallen from grace as a surgeon.\nResigning, he obtains a post as assistant in a miners' medical aid scheme in 'Aberalaw', a neighbouring coal mining town in the South Wales coalfield.\nOn the strength of this job, he marries Christine Barlow, a junior school teacher.\nChristine helps her husband with his silicosis research.\nEager to improve the lives of his patients, mainly coal miners, Manson dedicates many hours to research in his chosen field of lung disease.\nHe studies for, and is granted, the MRCP, and when his research is published, an MD.\nThe research gains him a post with the 'Mines Fatigue Board' in London, but he resigns after six months to set up a private practice.\nSeduced by the thought of easy money from wealthy clients rather than the principles he started out with, Manson becomes involved with pampered private patients and fashionable surgeons and drifts away from his wife.\nA patient dies because of a surgeon's ineptitude, and the incident causes Manson to abandon his practice and return to his former ways.\nHe and his wife repair their damaged relationship, but then she is run over by a bus and killed.\nSince Manson had accused the incompetent surgeon of murder, he is vindictively reported to the General Medical Council for having worked with an American tuberculosis specialist, Richard Stillman, who does not have a medical degree, even though the patient had been successfully treated at his clinic.\nStillman's treatment, that of pneumothorax involved collapsing an affected lung with nitrogen, and was not universally accepted at the time.\nDespite his lawyer's gloomy prognosis, Manson forcefully justifies his actions during the hearing and is not struck off the medical register.\nThe novel is of interest because of its portrayal of a voluntary contribution medical association which is based (not entirely uncritically) on the Tredegar Medical Aid Society for which Cronin worked for a time in the 1920s, and which in due course became the inspiration for the National Health Service as established under Aneurin Bevan.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Citadel (novel): In October 1924, Andrew Manson, an idealistic, newly qualified doctor, arrives from Scotland to work as assistant to Doctor Page in the small (fictitious) Welsh mining town of Drineffy (Blaenelly is the name given in some adaptations).\nHe quickly realises that Page is invalid and that he has to do all the work for a meagre wage.\nShocked by the unsanitary conditions he finds, he works to improve matters and receives the support of Dr Philip Denny, a cynical semi-alcoholic who has, Manson finds in due course, taken a post as an assistant doctor after having fallen from grace as a surgeon.\nResigning, he obtains a post as assistant in a miners' medical aid scheme in 'Aberalaw', a neighbouring coal mining town in the South Wales coalfield.\nOn the strength of this job, he marries Christine Barlow, a junior school teacher.\nChristine helps her husband with his silicosis research.\nEager to improve the lives of his patients, mainly coal miners, Manson dedicates many hours to research in his chosen field of lung disease.\nHe studies for, and is granted, the MRCP, and when his research is published, an MD.\nThe research gains him a post with the 'Mines Fatigue Board' in London, but he resigns after six months to set up a private practice.\nSeduced by the thought of easy money from wealthy clients rather than the principles he started out with, Manson becomes involved with pampered private patients and fashionable surgeons and drifts away from his wife.\nA patient dies because of a surgeon's ineptitude, and the incident causes Manson to abandon his practice and return to his former ways.\nHe and his wife repair their damaged relationship, but then she is run over by a bus and killed.\nSince Manson had accused the incompetent surgeon of murder, he is vindictively reported to the General Medical Council for having worked with an American tuberculosis specialist, Richard Stillman, who does not have a medical degree, even though the patient had been successfully treated at his clinic.\nStillman's treatment, that of pneumothorax involved collapsing an affected lung with nitrogen, and was not universally accepted at the time.\nDespite his lawyer's gloomy prognosis, Manson forcefully justifies his actions during the hearing and is not struck off the medical register.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is a plot for a book about Welsh, Citadel, film entitled The Citadel?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Citadel (film): Dr.\nAndrew Manson (Robert Donat) is an idealistic newly qualified Scottish doctor dedicated to treating the Welsh miners suffering from tuberculosis in the Welsh mining village of Blaenely and is an apprentice to dr Page (Basil Gill).\nInitially, he has many lofty scientific goals, but meets local resistance in his research.\nThere, his purpose erodes when a chance encounter with a medical school friend, dr Frederick Lawford (Rex Harrison) leads to his quiet seduction by an unethical medical establishment, treating rich hypochondriacs.\nChristine (Rosalind Russell), his wife tries to set him back on the original path.\ndr Philip Denny (Ralph Richardson), Manson's best friend and still working for improved working class health, dies at the hands of an incompetent, social-climbing surgeon.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Add another sentence about \nAfter, London, destroyed, taking, working, impoverished.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Citadel (film): Dr. \nAndrew Manson (Robert Donat) is an idealistic newly qualified Scottish doctor dedicated to treating the Welsh miners suffering from tuberculosis in the Welsh mining village of Blaenely and is an apprentice to dr Page (Basil Gill). \nInitially, he has many lofty scientific goals, but meets local resistance in his research. \nAfter his laboratory and notes are destroyed by the miners, he moves to London, taking working class patients in impoverished conditions. \nThere, his purpose erodes when a chance encounter with a medical school friend, dr Frederick Lawford (Rex Harrison) leads to his quiet seduction by an unethical medical establishment, treating rich hypochondriacs. \nChristine (Rosalind Russell), his wife tries to set him back on the original path. \ndr Philip Denny (Ralph Richardson), Manson's best friend and still working for improved working class health, dies at the hands of an incompetent, social-climbing surgeon.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is the first two paragraphs for this book?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Citadel
  Late one October afternoon in the year 1921, a shabby young man gazed with fixed intensity through the window of a third-class compartment in the almost empty train labouring up the Penowell valley from Swansea. All that day Manson had travelled from the North, changing at Carlisle and Shrewsbury, yet the final stage of his tedious journey to South Wales found him strung to a still greater excitement by the prospects of his post, the first of his medical career, in this strange, disfigured country.
  Outside, a heavy rainstorm came blinding down between the mountains which rose on either side of the single railway track. The mountain tops were hidden in a grey waste of sky, but their sides, scarred by ore workings, fell black and desolate, blemished by great heaps of slag on which a few dirty sheep wandered in vain hope of pasture. No bush, no blade of vegetation was visible. The trees, seen in the fading light, were gaunt and stunted spectres. At a bend of the line the red glare of a foundry flashed into sight, illuminating a score of workmen stripped to the waist, their torsos straining, arms upraised to strike. Though the scene was swiftly lost behind the huddled top gear of a mine, a sense of power persisted, tense and vivid. Manson drew a long breath. He felt an answering surge of effort, a sudden overwhelming exhilaration springing from the hope and promise of the future.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Citadel
  Late one October afternoon in the year 1921, a shabby young man gazed with fixed intensity through the window of a third-class compartment in the almost empty train labouring up the Penowell valley from Swansea. All that day Manson had travelled from the North, changing at Carlisle and Shrewsbury, yet the final stage of his tedious journey to South Wales found him strung to a still greater excitement by the prospects of his post, the first of his medical career, in this strange, disfigured country.
  Outside, a heavy rainstorm came blinding down between the mountains which rose on either side of the single railway track. The mountain tops were hidden in a grey waste of sky, but their sides, scarred by ore workings, fell black and desolate, blemished by great heaps of slag on which a few dirty sheep wandered in vain hope of pasture. No bush, no blade of vegetation was visible. The trees, seen in the fading light, were gaunt and stunted spectres. At a bend of the line the red glare of a foundry flashed into sight, illuminating a score of workmen stripped to the waist, their torsos straining, arms upraised to strike. Though the scene was swiftly lost behind the huddled top gear of a mine, a sense of power persisted, tense and vivid. Manson drew a long breath.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is five more paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Andrew drew back from his reading with excitement in his eyes. He felt himself upon the track of something definitely unexplored. He thought of the vast numbers of underground workers in the great anthracite mines, the looseness of the legislation upon the disabilities from which they suffered, the enormous social importance of this line of investigation. What a chance, what a wonderful chance! A cold sweat broke over him at the sudden thought that someone might forestall him. But he thrust this from him. Striding up and down the sitting-room before the dead fire long after midnight, he suddenly seized Christine's photograph from the mantelshelf.
  In the card-index he bought for the purpose he carefully began to classify the results of his examinations. Though he never considered this, his clinical skill was now quite brilliant. There, in the changing room, the men stood before him, stripped to the waist, and with his fingers, his stethoscope, he plumbed uncannily the hidden pathology of those living lungs: a fibroid spot here, the next an emphysema, then a chronic bronchitis—deprecatingly admitted as "a bit of a cough." Carefully he localized the lesions upon the diagrams printed on the back of every card.
  At the same time he took sputum samples from each man and, working till two and three in the morning at Denny's microscope, tabulated his findings on the cards. He found that most of these samples of muco-pus—locally described by the men as "white-spit"—contained bright angular particles of silica. He was amazed at the number of alveolar cells present, at the frequency with which he came upon the tubercule bacillus. But it was the presence, almost constant, of crystalline silicon, in the alveolar cells, the phagocytes, everywhere, which riveted his attention. He could not escape the thrilling idea that the changes in the lungs, perhaps even the coincident infections, were fundamentally dependent on this factor.
  This was the extent of his advance when Christine returned at the end of June and flung her arms round his neck.
  Her holiday had done her good, she was well and her cheeks had a fine bloom upon them. But she was concerned about him, his lack of appetite, his perpetual fumbling for a cigarette.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the first sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: He felt himself upon the track of something definitely unexplored. He thought of the vast numbers of underground workers in the great anthracite mines, the looseness of the legislation upon the disabilities from which they suffered, the enormous social importance of this line of investigation. What a chance, what a wonderful chance! A cold sweat broke over him at the sudden thought that someone might forestall him. But he thrust this from him. Striding up and down the sitting-room before the dead fire long after midnight, he suddenly seized Christine's photograph from the mantelshelf.
  In the card-index he bought for the purpose he carefully began to classify the results of his examinations. Though he never considered this, his clinical skill was now quite brilliant. There, in the changing room, the men stood before him, stripped to the waist, and with his fingers, his stethoscope, he plumbed uncannily the hidden pathology of those living lungs: a fibroid spot here, the next an emphysema, then a chronic bronchitis—deprecatingly admitted as "a bit of a cough." Carefully he localized the lesions upon the diagrams printed on the back of every card.
  At the same time he took sputum samples from each man and, working till two and three in the morning at Denny's microscope, tabulated his findings on the cards. He found that most of these samples of muco-pus—locally described by the men as "white-spit"—contained bright angular particles of silica. He was amazed at the number of alveolar cells present, at the frequency with which he came upon the tubercule bacillus. But it was the presence, almost constant, of crystalline silicon, in the alveolar cells, the phagocytes, everywhere, which riveted his attention. He could not escape the thrilling idea that the changes in the lungs, perhaps even the coincident infections, were fundamentally dependent on this factor.
  This was the extent of his advance when Christine returned at the end of June and flung her arms round his neck.
  Her holiday had done her good, she was well and her cheeks had a fine bloom upon them. But she was concerned about him, his lack of appetite, his perpetual fumbling for a cigarette.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is the last five paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: They lunched at the Connaught Restaurant. Though no flicker of emotion crossed Philip's face, though he talked mainly of motor cars to Con, he made it a happy celebration.
  Andrew gazed at Denny, conscious of his friendship, of all that he owed him since the first moment of their meeting in the little Blaenelly surgery.
  When Denny left to make his purchases Andrew accompanied Con and Mary to their train at Paddington. As they waited on the platform, rather silent now, he repeated the invitation he had already given them.
  When their train steamed out Andrew still had an hour to spare. Instinctively, he boarded a bus, and soon he was in Kensal Green. He entered the cemetery, stood a long time at Christine's grave, thinking of many things. It was a bright, fresh afternoon, with that crispness in the breeze which she had always loved. Above him, on the branch of a grimy tree, a sparrow chirped merrily.
  When at last he turned away, hastening for fear he should be late, there in the sky before him a bank of cloud lay brightly, bearing the shape of battlements.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Add another sentence about wished.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: They lunched at the Connaught Restaurant. Though no flicker of emotion crossed Philip's face, though he talked mainly of motor cars to Con, he made it a happy celebration. 
  Andrew gazed at Denny, conscious of his friendship, of all that he owed him since the first moment of their meeting in the little Blaenelly surgery. 
  When Denny left to make his purchases Andrew accompanied Con and Mary to their train at Paddington. As they waited on the platform, rather silent now, he repeated the invitation he had already given them. 
  When their train steamed out Andrew still had an hour to spare. But there was no doubt in his mind as to what he wished to do. Instinctively, he boarded a bus, and soon he was in Kensal Green. He entered the cemetery, stood a long time at Christine's grave, thinking of many things. It was a bright, fresh afternoon, with that crispness in the breeze which she had always loved. Above him, on the branch of a grimy tree, a sparrow chirped merrily. 
  When at last he turned away, hastening for fear he should be late, there in the sky before him a bank of cloud lay brightly, bearing the shape of battlements.