Books: Wise Man from the East

VENTURE WITH IDEAS (212 pp.)—Kenneth Walker—Pellegrini & Cudahy ($3.25).

Kenneth Walker, eminent British surgeon, put his faith in the gods of Harley Street: scientific method and a good bedside manner. Off duty, he indulged his yen for the fanciful in a voyage to India, a flyer in Paraguayan railway shares, a children's book about Noah's Ark. The strains of 20th century life left him wishing, now & then, for a good latter-day ark. In 1923, a friend startled him by announcing that "a small group of people now in London . . . has...