Dramas From the Life of a Doctor
Charles S. Norburn, MD, Author, and Lillian Norburn Alexander, Editor
Lillian Norburn Alexander’s father, Dr. Charles S. Norburn, gave her his stories before he died with hopes that she would edit and publish them. The COVID hiatus gave her the time she and those who assisted her needed. “The project has been one of love,” Alexander says. “Working with the book over the last two years, I have learned many things about my father’s life. Through his writing, I grew to see clearly his deep empathy for his patients, his humanity, his thoughts on creation, the human condition and his undying wonder at the beauty of life and nature.”
Norburn lived from 1890 until 1990, founding The Norburn Hospital & Clinic in Asheville where Alexander was born. When it outgrew its Montford Avenue location he moved the hospital to Biltmore Avenue. That location, with its advanced equipment and library, became, through Victoria Hospital, part of the group founding Memorial Mission Hospital. “His experiences in the book include those of his medical training, the U.S. Navy in World War I, his hospital and patients, and the medicine and life of a doctor a century ago,” Alexander says, adding that he never kept a journal but recalled life stories with the aid of a photographic memory. “These remembrances are those of medicine before specialization,” she says. “As a surgeon and general practitioner, he did everything from setting bones to brain surgery.”
The Cry in the Night: Dramas From the Life of a Doctor, October 2022, memoir, paperback $15.95, e-book $7.99, by Charles S. Norburn and edited by Lillian Norburn Alexander, and published by Whisperblue, Asheville, NC. Learn more at CharlesSNorburn.com.
