For three months in 1960 American surgeon Dr. Edgar Berman worked side by side with Nobel Peace Prize-winner Dr. Albert Schweitzer in a primitive medical outpost in deepest Africa. ”In Africa with Schweitzer” (New Horizon) is the book Berman wrote from the journal he had kept of that experience.
Q–We have this image of Schweitzer as a saint. Was he?
A–He told me: ”The press portrays me as either a saint or a devil. I`m only a man, but with attributes from both above and below.” He was very compassionate but also very autocratic, and he ran his fiefdom with an iron hand. If a doctor forgot to turn on a generator to power the operating-room lights or a native came to work drunk, he`d raise holy hell with them.
Q–How did the people around him treat him?
A–Like a god. The dinner table was like the Last Supper. They wouldn`t speak until spoken to. They were all shocked when I joked with him or opposed him at the operating table. He was a man who loved the world but couldn`t get along with his own family; he was too involved with his many thoughts to have time for them.
Q–Why did Schweitzer choose to live in Africa for 50 years?
A–Here was a man who was so endowed with talent that he had doctorates in theology, philosophy and music, yet at the age of 33 went to medical school against the wishes of his family and friends because he had a profound sense of man`s responsibility to his fellow man and to all living things. He wouldn`t kill a mosquito. At the time, he was the toast of Europe as an organist and interpreter of Bach. He was frequently compared to Leonardo da Vinci, yet I don`t think da Vinci could hold a candle to him. He actually produced more in the jungle than most geniuses do in London, Paris or New York.
Q–Did he get any intellectual stimulation in the jungle?
A–Very little except that occasioned by a few visitors–Adlai Stevenson, Linus Pauling. Mostly he communicated with the world through letters. And he missed the stimulation. He told me, ”Do you think I like living here?” We lived in small monasterylike cells with no running water, no electricity, sleeping on beds of straw in 110-degree heat.
Q–Was he a happy man?
A–I`m not sure. He was supposed to have gone through a great depression in Europe, but when I knew him, there was no evidence of it. He was 85, working 16 to 18 hours a day. But he told me once, ”I`ve never been really happy.”
