Round the Red Lamp - Hardcover

Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1421808048 ISBN 13: 9781421808048

Publisher: 1st World Library - Literary Society, 2006

Synopsis

I quite recognise the force of your objection that an invalid or a woman in weak health would get no good from stories which attempt to treat some features of medical life with a certain amount of realism. If you deal with this life at all, however, and if you are anxious to make your doctors something more than marionettes, it is quite essential that you should paint the darker side, since it is that which is principally presented to the surgeon or physician. He sees many beautiful things, it is true, fortitude and heroism, love and self-sacrifice; but they are all called forth (as our nobler qualities are always called forth) by bitter sorrow and trial. One cannot write of medical life and be merry over it. Then why write of it, you may ask? If a subject is painful why treat it at all? I answer that it is the province of fiction to treat painful things as well as cheerful ones. The story which wiles away a weary hour fulfils an obviously good purpose, but not more so, I hold, than that which helps to emphasise the graver side of life. A tale which may startle the reader out of his usual grooves of thought, and shocks him into seriousness, plays the part of the alterative and tonic in medicine, bitter to the taste but bracing in the result. There are a few stories in this little collection which might have such an effect, and I have so far shared in your feeling that I have reserved them from serial publication. In book-form the reader can see that they are medical stories, and can, if he or she be so minded, avoid them.

About this title

From the Publisher:

This book is a large print version using a minimum of 16 point type in a 6 by 9 inch size and library bound. As with all Quiet Vision print books, it use a high grade, acid free paper for long life.

About the Author:

Arthur Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh in 1859. Sent off to boarding school, he cut his teeth as a story-teller amusing his schoolmates with tales and writing letters home to his mother.He practiced medicine and, in 1900, volunteered as a medic in Africa during the Boer War - he was later knighted for his service. Doyle lost a son, two brothers in law, and two nephews to the Great War. He is remembered for the Sherlock Holmes stories and his novel The Lost World.

About this edition

• Publisher: 1st World Library - Literary Society
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1421808048
• ISBN 13: 9781421808048
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 284
• Editor: 1st World Library, 1stworld Library