Melville House Books

A new book about Dylan Thomas says it wasn’t drinking that did him in—it was “a bungling doctor.” As Fiona MacGregor reports in a story for The Scotsman, the authors of Dylan Remembered, 1935-1953, David Thomas and Dr Simon Barton say that the poet’s personal physician, Dr. Milton Feltenstein, ignored the findings of the doctors who admitted Thomas to St. Vincent’s Hospital in New York, where Thomas was brought after collapsing at the White Horse Tavern. The writers say Feltenstein ignored findings that Thomas was suffering from pneumonia, and instead, based upon the poet bragging to him that he had had “18 straight whiskies; I think it’s a record.” Feltenstein “decided [Thomas] had delirium tremens and ignored the possibility of a chest infection.” Feltenstein then “injected the poet with three doses of morphine, which the biographers say restricted his breathing.” Thomas slipped into a coma and died four days later at age 40. (Feltenstein died in 1974.) The biographers do admit, however, that “Over the long term, Dylan’s smoking, drinking, poor diet and sleeping problems created a general debilitation in which the bronchitis and pneumonia could take hold.”

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.