At the end of the second paragraph in Arrowsmith Chapter 3 Section 1, we read that "Dr. Robertshaw was working up to his annual climax about the effects of brass bands on the intensity of the knee-jerk."
I recently discovered that "brass bands" from this passage was rendered as "strips of brass" in Ugai's 1941 Japanese translation.
Thinking this was surely a mistake, I took to Google to see if there might be any justification for it in the medical literature. Amazingly, I did find a medical paper that relates strips of brass to the knee-jerk. The article described an apparatus that recorded the reaction using a mallet to strike the brass! But this work took place somewhat after the publication of Arrowsmith, and, doesn't it just seem too obscure to have been used without further description?
I Googled again, this time using much of the direct quote from Arrowsmith, just to see what would surface. To my delight, I found this book: Davenport, H. W., Not Just Any Medical School: The Science, Practice, and Teaching of Medicine at the University of Michigan, 1850-1941, University of Michigan Press, 1986.
Davenport also quotes Arrowsmith along with descriptions of the work and character of Warren Plimpton Lombard (1855 - 1939) who, as it turns out, must certainly be the model Lewis used for the character of Robertshaw. It also explains that Lombard was studying the knee-jerk one day when a brass band began playing in the park outside, so he studied the reaction both when the band was playing, and when it was not.
One never knows what lurks beneath the scene.
What great cultural research work. One can understand why Arrowsmith is read by medical students since there's a lot about the history of medicine in the novel.
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