Autopsy. The Memoirs of Milton Helpern, The World's Greatest Medical Detective: Milton Helpern and Bernard Knight,  St. Martin's Press, New York, 1977,  273 pp., $10.00.

Psychoanalysts of necessity are interested in biographical and autobiographical accounts of prominent people, since their work consists in large part of studying life histories and because they consistently pursue the origin of the creative spark. Autobiographies written with candor are particularly valuable. The psychoanalyst will therefore find the present volume rather disappointing. It is largely a compilation of notorious medicolegal cases to the solution of which Helpern contributed. This is the part of their work in which forensic specialists apparently feel the reader will be most interested.

Helpern had the faulty notion that others are not interested in his personal life, and so we are treated to only a very circumscribed picture of his early development in New York City. His wife is not even mentioned, although she appeared prominently with him in medical activities. So we learn little or nothing about what determines a career in pathology or dedication to the often gruesome task of the medicolegal expert. Some phases of Helpern's work, e.g., his interest in medical history, are not alluded to.

It is easy to confirm that Helpern was a man of polished personality makeup. The reviewer knew him personally as a member of the same medical fraternity and through activities of the Medical Archivists of New York and other groups. The book does not do justice to the man, but was probably not intended as anything but a brief sketch of this pioneering professional career. Since autobiographical accounts written by coroners and medical examiners are so rare, the psychoanalyst will welcome even this meager account of their personal experiences.