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Doyle, A[rthur] Conan. Round the Red Lamp. Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life. D. Appleton, New York, 1894.

Price: US$150.00 + shipping

Description: First American Edition. [vi], 307 (+4 ads) pp. 1 vols. 8vo. Original red cloth, stamped in silver and gold. Spine a trifle faded, head of spine chipped, shallow waterstain along top edge throughout, not affecting text. Very Good [vi], 307 (+4 ads) pp. 1 vols. 8vo

Seller: The Old Mill Bookshop, HACKETTSTOWN, NJ, U.S.A.

Doyle, Arthur Conan. Round the Red Lamp: Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life [VINTAGE 1894] [FIRST EDITION]. D. Appleton and Company, New York, 1894.

Price: US$695.00 + shipping

Condition: Fine

Description: Fine condition red cloth boards with silver and gold front cover decoration and bright silver front cover and spine lettering. Includes The Preface and a rear section of D. Appleton publications. All pages are in fine lightly tanned condition and the spine is exceedingly tight and square. "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 aways 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 fulfills an obviously good purpose, but not more so, I hold, than that which helps to emphasize 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 alternative 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 our 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. Yours very truly, A. Conan Doyle. P.S. - You ask about the Red Lamp. It is the usual sign of the general practitioner in England." - from The Preface

Seller: Vero Beach Books, Vero Beach, FL, U.S.A.