Review:Conan Doyle's Tales of Medical Humanism and Values/Christopher Roden
This review of the book "Conan Doyle's Tales of Medical Humanism and Values", by Alvin E. Rodin & Jack D. Key was written by Christopher Roden and published in the A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society (Vol. 3, 1992).
Review
- Conan Doyle's Tales of Medical Humanism and Values
- Edited by Alvin E. Rodin and Jack D. Key
- Robert E. Krieger, Malabar, 1992: xii + 481pp: U.S.S42.50, ISBN 0-89464-571-4
Reviewed by Christopher Roden
The prolific North American writers. Sherlockians, and Doyleans, Alvin E. Rodin and Jack D. Key, have followed their Medical Casebook of Doctor Arthur Conan Doyle (1984) with what is, essentially, an annotated version of ACD's Round The Red Lamp with the addition of other items. It is a mammoth undertaking, but the result is well worthwhile. The introduction provides a useful brief account of Conan Doyle's medical career, and looks at the content and themes of the stories included in the volume. Each story is followed by a concise commentary and annotations and. as we have come to expect from Messrs Rodin & Key, sources and references are more than adequately detailed.
All of the Round The Red Lamp stories are included, and are complemented by 'Crabbe's Practice', 'The Great Keinplatz Experiment', 'The Ring of Thoth', 'The Dying Detective', 'The Creeping Man', and 'The Blanched Soldier', which are included on the grounds that they have medical content, although in varying degrees. Two further stories noted as having medical content are sadly not included: the very strong 'The Surgeon of Gaster Fell' and 'The Retirement of Signor Lambert'. One cannot help remarking that their inclusion may have been preferable and somewhat more edifying than yet another reprint of three Sherlock Holmes stories.
Perhaps the most important inclusion is ACD's 'The Romance of Medicine', a presentation which he made to medical students at St Mary's Hospital Medical School in 1910. The editors tell us that this article has previously appeared in the St. Mary's Hospital Gazette (1910), the Times (1910), and in abbreviated form in the Lancet (1910). They continue:
- [The] article has several unique features. It is one of the relatively few of his many lectures that have been published in total. Also unusual is the presence of faulty grammar, such as singular verbs following multiple nouns, possibly related to its delivery as a speech. Its length, as printed in the St Mary's Hospital Gazette, is considerable, requiring about one-and-a-half hours for oral presentation.
Some errors of grammar have also crept into this volume chiefly, one believes, through poor typography. That is to be regretted, but it in no way detracts from a very presentable and extremely useful text — an ideal companion to The Medical Casebook of Doctor Arthur Conan Doyle.
C.R.
- Article courtesy Christopher Roden, founder of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society (1989-2003).
