Dr Theodore Dalrymple reviews The Man with Miraculous Hands by Joseph Kessel, published by Elliott & Thompson £20
When I told people that one of my first patients in prison was a man who had killed and dismembered three children and who now complained of a slight cough, they would ask how I could treat such a man. It was the same question, in essence, as lawyers are asked about their defence of those whom they suspect to be guilty of the awful crime of which they have been accused. But what of treating a man such as Heinrich Himmler, guilty not of individual crimes but of unprecedented mass murder as national policy? To treat him medically was the fate of Felix Kersten (1898-1960), an alternative practitioner and masseur trained in Eastern methods who was the only person who could relieve the Reichsführer’s intermittent bouts of excruciating abdominal pain. Opposed to Nazism, Kersten used Himmler’s dependence on him to help reprieve the lives of many prisoners of the...
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