Reviews of and Quotes From Books About Dr. Schweitzer

Here is my review of a book about Dr. Schweitzer. All the books I review are in English. Many of them are out of print, but generally can be found by a book search from a good used-book dealer or in softcopy from the Internet Archive. See The Albert Schweitzer Page for links to my reviews of books written by Dr. Schweitzer as well as other related information.
 


The World of Albert Schweitzer

Written By: Erica Anderson

Reviewed Edition: Harper and Brothers Publishers, New York, 1955

No ISBN Shown

Hardcover, 144 pages

This book is available via the Internet Archive at [IA].

Quotes

Table of Contents

The World of Albert Schweitzer is a book of wonderful photographs of Albert Schweitzer, his hospital at Lambarene, and his home in Gunsbach, France. Erica Anderson filmed the Oscar-winning documentary about Schweitzer, and this volume has much in common with the film. It shows Schweitzer at work as a medical doctor, a hospital supervisor, a musician, and an author. There are many superb, arresting pictures of African patients, family members, and hospital workers. I was also interested in the pictures of Gunsbach in the early 1950s, when at least some women still washed their clothes on boards by the river.

While there are a few pages of text giving an overview of Schweitzer's life and work, most of the book is devoted to large, sharp, black-and-white pictures and their captions. Therefore in addition to the usual quotations, I have included scanned images of a couple photographs from the book.


Quotes from The World of Albert Schweitzer

"When Dr. Schweitzer began constructing the new buildings [for the leper settlement at Lambarene], he sent for Monenzalie to come back from his village and again become head carpenter. But Monenzalie relied that he was now too old to work. 'If you come back and keep working, you will get younger every day,' promised the 79-year-old Doctor. And he did."

"One night as Dr. Schweitzer worked late at his desk he heard a baby cry. It was a sick child's plaintive crying, coming from the room of a nurse, who, beyond the call of duty, took care of seven orphan babies every night. He remembered the incident a few months later when he was saying good-bye to this nurse as she left for her home in Switzerland. 'People say I understand something about music,' he said, 'but the sweetest sound I have ever heard came from your room one night, when from the change in the baby's crying I knew that the crisis had passed, and that he would be well again.'"

Picture caption: "The bandages of the lepers are sterilized and hung to dry in the sun. Cotton cloth, which is sewn into simple garments for patients, made into sheets, and cut into bandages, is always in short supply."


The picture caption is a quotation from Albert Schweitzer in Christendom, Winter, 1936: "I ask knowledge what it can tell me of life. Knowledge replies that what it can tell me is little, yet immense. Whence this universe came, or whither it is bound, or how it happens to be at all, knowledge cannot tell me. Only this: that the will-to-live is everywhere present, even as in me."


Table of Contents of The World of Albert Schweitzer

    AN INTRODUCTION to Albert Schweitzer
    AFRICA and the Jungle Hospital
    EUROPE and the Alsatian Homeland
    RETURN VOYAGE
    REFERENCES



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