In the original dust jacket. Navy cloth binding with silver title on the spine.

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For conditions, please view our photographs. An original  book from the library gathered by the famous Cambridge Don, computer scientist, food and wine connoisseur, Jack Arnold LANG. This book was the property of Jack’s distinguished mother.

The author who pioneered the operations and applications of artificial organs, replacing failing ones, including artificial kidneys, artificial heart valves, transplanted kidneys, livers and lungs. The book remains in strange contrast to the author’s Nazi career as a Nazi propagandist.

The Patients by Jürgen Thorwald, published in English by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich (often 1971 or 1972), is a popular science book detailing the groundbreaking, often dramatic, stories of early organ transplants, artificial organs, and medical advancements, translated by Richard and Clara Winston, offering insights into surgical frontiers like heart and kidney transplants.

Key Details:

• Author: Jürgen Thorwald (pseudonym for Heinz Bongartz).

• Title: The Patients: The Moving and Dramatic Story of the Men, Women, and Children Who Submitted to the Newest Forms of Surgery (full title).

• Publishers: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich (New York).

• Year: 1971 or 1972 (different editions/printings).

• Language: English.

• Translators: Richard and Clara Winston.

• Content: Explores early human experimentation with organ transplantation (heart, kidney), artificial organs, and the ethical/medical challenges of the time, making complex surgery accessible to a general audience.

This book was a significant work in popular science, bringing the frontiers of surgery into mainstream awareness.

Jürgen Thorwald (born Heinz Bongartz, October 28, 1915 – April 4, 2006) was a German writer, journalist and historian known for his works describing the history of forensic medicine and of World War II.

Thorwald was a native of Solingen, Rhenish Prussia, and attended the University of Cologne. He started his career in 1933 at age 18, during the Nazi era, writing for publications such as Die Braune Post (“The Brown Mail”), the SS journal Das Schwarze Korps (“The Black Corps”) and the NSDAP paper National-Zeitung. During the war he worked as a propaganda writer, focusing on the Luftwaffe, Kriegsmarine and the general German war effort.

After the war he used the pseudonym Jürgen Thorwald in order to be able to work under allied occupation. In 1947 he legally adopted the new name.

Thorwald’s book The Century of the Detective was nominated for the Edgar Allan Poe Award in 1966 in Best Fact Crime category but he lost to Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. In 1984 he was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. Thorwald died in Lugano.