Frank Slaughter; Doctor Wrote Novels

Dr. Frank G. Slaughter, who became a surgeon and then gave it up to churn out more than 60 best-selling novels rooted in the profession over nearly half a century, has died. He was 93.

Slaughter, whose books often scolded medical doctors and sold more than 60 million copies in 20 countries, died May 17 in his sleep at his Jacksonville, Fla., home.

The prolific writer wrote several novels that were made into motion pictures, including “Seminole” in 1953, starring Rock Hudson, Barbara Hale and Anthony Quinn, and in the same year “Sangaree,” with Fernando Lamas and Arlene Dahl.

Slaughter’s murder mystery “Doctors’ Wives” was made into the 1971 film of the same title starring Dyan Cannon, Richard Crenna, Gene Hackman and Carroll O’Connor.

In many of his stories, Slaughter disparaged the rising importance among pre-HMO doctors of wealth and leisure activities such as golf over the traditional physician’s role of service to mankind. He did so by featuring characters who enjoyed respect, fame and top pay as heart surgeons, but cheated on wives and put tee times over patients’ needs.

Lauded by critics for his detailed knowledge of the medical profession, Slaughter was also praised for his “excellent quality of writing” and suspenseful plots said to “pin the reader to the last page.” Several of his novels, occasionally under the pseudonym C.V. Terry, also had biblical or historical settings.

Born in Washington, D.C., Slaughter earned degrees at Duke University and Johns Hopkins Medical School, interned in Roanoke, Va., and then joined the surgery staff at Jacksonville’s Riverside Hospital in 1934.

Only then did he purchase a typewriter and start writing. He wrote hundreds of short stories in what he said “started out as a hobby,” but sold only one--in 1938 for $12.

Success came when he turned to novels and started writing about what he knew--medicine. Even then, he rewrote his first book, the semiautobiographical “That None Should Die,” six times before it was published in 1941.

By the time Slaughter mustered out of the Army Medical Corps in 1946, after heading a hospital ship in the Pacific, he had published five novels and was working on the sixth. He never returned to practicing medicine.

Slaughter’s success streak ended after the mid-1980s, but he continued until his death to dictate passages for another novel.

Among his books were “Battle Surgeon,” “The Road to Bithynia: A Novel of Luke, the Beloved Physician,” “Healer,” “Epidemic!” “Surgeon’s Choice: A Novel of Medicine Tomorrow,” “Plague Ship,” “Doctors at Risk” and “Transplant.”

Widowed in 1990, Slaughter is survived by two sons, Randolph and Frank Jr.

The storyteller had even drafted his own epitaph. He told an interviewer on his 90th birthday in 1998:

“The end of my story will be, ‘Gone to glory.’ ”