Sword and Scalpel

A fascinating memoir detailing the life and experiences of Dr. Larry Rogers, MD, who volunteered to serve as a medical doctor in Vietnam during the most intense phase of fighting--during the days and months leading up to the infamous Tet Offensive. Slogging through streams and jungle, he and his colleagues weathered not only fire fights and rockets attacks but scorpions and deadly snakes. But he also experienced stunning medical triumphs, including returning life to a soldier left for dead in a makeshift morgue and resuscitating another by hastily jerry-rigging a defibrillator from an auxiliary generator and strips of radio-antenna wire. Dr. Rogers' story is not only about battle wounds and narrow escapes but includes the plights of innocents, from orphaned newborns in the throes of disease to a beautiful heroic Vietnamese nurse-midwife haunted by the memory of witnessing the execution of her family as a child. A fascinating portrait of survival and healing during a time of war.

Larry Rogers of Charlotte, NC Larry Rogers, father of five, practiced neurosurgery in Charlotte, NC for 27 years. He is the author of twenty-five scientific articles, author-collaborator of aneurosurgical textbook, co-editor of another, and a novelist, producing Against the Grain, a 2008 story of a 1980's brain surgery, which is still available from mostonline vendors.