Berton Roueché

Clarence Berton Roueché, Jr. ( roo-SHAY; April 16, 1910 – April 28, 1994) was an American medical writer who wrote for The New Yorker magazine for almost fifty years. He also wrote twenty books, including Eleven Blue Men (1954), The Incurable Wound (1958), Feral (1974), and The Medical Detectives (1980). An article he wrote for The New Yorker was made into the 1956 film Bigger Than Life, and many of the medical mysteries on the television show House were inspired by Roueché's writings. Berton Roueché was born in Chicago on April 16, 1910, to Clarence Berton Roueché Sr., a tailor, and Nana Maria Mossman His paternal great-grandparents emigrated from France. He graduated from Southwest High School in Kansas City in 1928 and is a member of the Southwest High School Hall of Fame. He received an undergraduate journalism degree at the University of Missouri in 1933. He was a reporter for The Kansas City Star, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and the St. Louis Globe-Democrat. On October 28, 1936, he married Katherine Eisenhower, the niece of future U.S. President General Dwight D. Eisenhower. She remained his wife until his death in 1994. They had one child, Arthur Bradford Roueché, who was born November 16, 1942.In 1944, he was hired as a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine. In 1946, "The Annals of Medicine" department of the magazine was created for him. "The Annals of Medicine" is a series about medical detection and the fight against different diseases. An article he wrote for The New Yorker, titled "Ten Feet Tall", was made into a 1956 film called Bigger Than Life, which stars James Mason. The article and film are about the negative side effects of the drug cortisone. Roueché remained a staff writer for The New Yorker until his death, a span of about fifty years.In addition to writing for The New Yorker, he also wrote twenty books. The books are mostly pieces of medical writing, focused on epidemiology, with elements of mystery and detective work. He also wrote several suspense novels, these include Black Weather (1945), The Last Enemy (1956), Feral (1974), and Fago (1977). Roueché's writings, especially his book The Medical Detectives (1980), inspired in part the television show House, which premiered in 2004 on the Fox network. Many of the medical cases in the show are directly inspired by real-life cases in The Medical Detectives. His 1954 book Eleven Blue Men, which was a collection of pieces he had written for The New Yorker, was awarded a Raven by the Mystery Writers of America. In 1982, he received an Academy Award of The American Academy of Arts and Letters for literature. He also received awards from the American Medical Association, the New England Journal of Medicine, the Kansas City Academy of Medicine, the American Medical Writers Association, and the Lasker Foundation.On April 28, 1994, Roueché died at his home in Amagansett, Long Island. He was 84 years old. He committed suicide by a shotgun wound to his head. He had been diagnosed with emphysema five years earlier, and his wife said he had been depressed.