Frank Slaughter wrote medical tales

Frank Slaughter

It is the birthday of novelist and physician Frank Slaughter (1908), the prolific and bestselling author of modern medical adventures, historical tales and biblical stories. Slaughter lived in Jacksonville for 50 years and served as a surgeon at Riverside Hospital there for nine years. His first book, That None Should Die (1941), sold moderately in the United States but was a bestseller in Denmark and other Scandinavian countries. Many of his books were set in Florida, and one, Fort Everglades (1951) was filmed as the movie Distant Drums. Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings met him while she was a hospital patient. She apparently didn't think much of his writing. She told him he should stick to surgery. He wrote 56 books that sold more than 60 million copies.