![]() Even so, there is something naive and endearing about Zigas, and when Gajdusek finally arrives to do the thorough study that won him the Nobel, Zigas pays him devoted though not always lucid tribute. But for three-quarters of the book, Zigas himself is its hero and the reader must slog through his eccentric, garrulous, muddy prose to get a glimmer of light on the scene he tries to describe and his role in it. Although his own experience was limited, Zigas succeeded in interesting his superiors and eventually future Nobel Prize winner Carleton Gajdusek (Medicine, 1976). With a smattering of anthropological background, a kind heart, elementary medical skills, and a romantic imagination, he became intrigued with a fatal disease that struck one particular tribe and that the natives attributed to magic. In 1950, the author, who characterizes himself as ""a simple young man who knew very little and believed a lot,""was an inexperienced medical officer assigned to provide health services to several ""stone age"" tribes in Australian New Guinea. ![]() An often preposterous memoir of the events surrounding the identification of a rare form of encephalitis occurring in a New Guinea tribe-a feat that won a Nobel Prize for its chief researcher. ![]()
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