Iowa City neurologist pens tales inspired by patients

Up until 15 years ago, Morgantown, WV, hosted an annual rattlesnake sacking competition.

Those brave - or foolhardy - enough to participate, raced to sack five rattlesnakes faster than their challengers. They couldn't hurt the snake and couldn't get bit.

Those who were bit and survived became a member of the sunken fang society. They earned an unwanted patch as a reminder that they lost and came close to dying.

It's this tradition and honorary society that inspired Dr. Ludwig Gutmann's recently released collection of short stories. One of the 20 stories in 'The Sunken Fang Society” tells the story of one of the men who is bitten during the competition.

The contest 'caught everybody's fancy, of course, because it was such an unusual event,” says Gutmann, a neurologist at the University of Iowa and author living in Iowa City. 'It was always the same story: bit on Sunday, home on Wednesday. In the meantime you spent a couple of days in the (intensive care unit).”

It was in the ICU that Gutmann first discovered the annual event. He was at West Virginia University when he encountered a patient suffering from Myokymia, twitching 'jumpy” muscles caused by rattlesnake toxin, which resolve 24 hours after treatment.

Both his first book, 'The Immobile Man,” and his third, 'The Sunken Fang Society,” are influenced by Gutmann's medical training. His latest he says particularly focuses on 'how people can deal extraordinarily well with the challenging moments in their lives.”

He often finds inspiration at work, which he attributes to doctor's 'privileged place” in society.

'They can wade into people's personal lives very quickly,” he says. 'We're always sticking our noses into people's personal lives ...(we) really get to know people and some events are worth telling.”

He fictionalizes his patients stories to protect their identity.

'You know, when you read fiction ... there's always some non-fiction in the fiction,” he says. 'Sometimes a lot of non-fiction.”

Not all of his stories are fiction, however. His second book, 'Richard Road,” is a non-fiction memoir of his experiences as a German immigrant.

'Though I don't feel like it, I'm a Holocaust survivor,” he says. 'My memories begin in the United States. I don't have any memories - or just vague ones - about being in Germany. I didn't feel the sense of turmoil and fear that my parents must have, except through the stories I heard.”

His family made the decision to leave the country before World War II in 1937. He was 4 years old.

'They didn't really believe the awfulness that happened or (that it) could ever happen in a civilized country like Germany,” Gutmann says. 'You see some of those same awful events occur in countries where the level of sophistication isn't so high, particularly in Third World countries, but this was not a Third World country. This was the country of Beethoven ... but my parents saw it realistically and made the decision to leave while it was possible.”

Though most of his relatives left, some did not make it out in time. His grandmother, who suffered from Alzheimer's disease and refused to leave, was one of many exterminated in concentration camps.

Understandably, his mother hated Germany. She hated the 'brutality and evilness” of the German government and the fact that the people of Germany didn't rise up against it.

'I grew up with that as standard dinner conversation,” Gutmann says. 'She's never forgiven them.”

The title 'Richard Road” was inspired by the street Gutmann grew up on. It also hints at the metaphorical road his life took from his immigration to attending Princeton University, which he says was the 'great goal” his parents always had for him and his brother.

'We had a pushy mother,” he says with a laugh. 'I shouldn't say pushy. She was ambitious for her sons and was worried. She wanted to be sure they had all the opportunities of any other American, so she shot for the top.”

Gutmann graduated from Princeton in 1955, studied medicine at Columbia University until 1959, completed a residency in neurology at University of Wisconsin in 1963, served as a U.S. Air Force neurologist from 1963 to 1965 and did a fellowship in clinical neurophysiology at the Mayo Clinic from 1965 to 1966.

He was hired by West Virginia University where he worked for 47 years. He helped establish the Department of Neurology, which he chaired for 28 years. In 2013, he became Professor Emeritus at WVU and moved to the University of Iowa.

He also received an honorary doctorate from the University of Mainz in Germany in 1993 and has published more than 170 articles in peer reviewed journals, in addition to his three books.

And yet, he still finds time for storytelling.

'I'm always thinking about stories ... but you have to sort of have the right mind-set,” he says. 'I'm often putting the story together during the times that I'm biking or running and I can think these things through. The real problem is finding the time to sit down at the computer and write the story, but that's what I do on vacations and weekends.”