SOURCE: "Norris's Debt in 'Lauth' to Lemattre's On the Transfusion of Blood'," in American Literary Realism, Vol. XI, No. 2, Autumn, 1978, pp. 243-48.

In the following essay, Tatum cites a scientific article about blood transfusion as a probable source for Norris's story "Lauth."

Whatever its critical merit as a literary effort, Frank Norris's "Lauth" (Overland Monthly, March 1893) remains his most important early writing, distilling as it does his concepts of personality and morality in a fictive presentation of total human reversion. Because "Lauth" bears the imprint of key influences upon Norris's development as a writer, the story has usually been discussed within the context of Professor Joseph Le Conte's teachings on evolution, as well as Norris's possible familiarity with Kipling's The Mark of the Beast, Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, and Zola's La Bête Humaine. Without denying the accuracy and propriety...