Arthur Conan Doyle and the Consumption Cure' A large number of the important themes of Arthur Conan Doyle's life, his intellectual character, and the emergence of his vocation, cluster in the story of a trip he made to Berlin in 1890, with the purpose of attending a scientific lecture. He tells the story in a chapter of Memories and Adventures (1924) entitled 'Pulling Up the Anchor' in token of his own reading of late 1890 as a turning point in his career and life. 1 The Berlin episode constituted a decisive turn in his relation to the professions and discourses of writing and medicine, to science and art, and to the provincial, metropolitan and continental scene. It dramatized the issue of the professional's responsibility to society. It foregrounded questions of nationality and ethnicity. It provided him with a model of the heroic investigator combating dangerous antagonists, to be developed in the serial figures of Sherlock Holmes and Professor Challenger. The Berlin adventure was in many ways a critical point in Conan Doyle's evolution as man of letters, and it merits a thicker description. In mid-November 1890, Conan Doyle, a 31-year-old provincial doctor in general practice with the beginnings of a reputation as a writer of fiction, decided on the spur of the moment to travel to Berlin, to attend a demonstration of a cure for tuberculosis announced by Professor Robert Koch, the celebrated German bacteriologist. '[A]t a few hours' notice,' he recalled years later, 'I packed up a bag and started off alone upon this curious adventure' (M&A, 88). He went up to London from Portsmouth, collected some 1 Arthur Conan Doyle, Memories and Adventures 1924 (Oxford,1989) pp. 82-93. Further references to this book, abbreviated M&A, will be parenthetical. letters of introduction, and hurried on to the continent that same night, meeting on the train a smart London doctor, Malcolm Morris, who was also going to learn more about the consumption cure. In Berlin, Conan Doyle could not get in to the packed hall to attend the demonstration given by Koch's colleague Ernst von Bergmann, but the next day he was given access to the German doctors' wards where Koch's procedure was being tested on tubercular patients. Without delay he sent a letter to the Daily Telegraph in which he recorded his doubts about the so-called cure; later he wrote a longer piece for the Review of Reviews also casting doubt on the curative properties of Koch's procedure, while heaping praise on Koch himself as a Carlylean hero of science. Returning from Berlin via London to his home on the south coast, the following day Conan Doyle gave an interview to a local newspaper about his Berlin trip, in which he announced that he was giving up his Southsea practice. He had decided to go to Vienna to further his studies in ophthalmology before setting up in London as a specialist. The last part of the story is a familiar episode of the Conan Doyle myth, and is cheerfully recounted in his autobiographical Memories and Adventures, written in 1924. Setting up in practic...
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Multiple diverticulosis of the colon is frequent. The -formation of the small herniae is preceded by irritationi or inflammation of the area of the bowel involved-thle prediverticular state. Diverticulosis is frequently associated -with various infective states elsewhere, and particuilarly with arthritic changes in the spine and apical tootl abscesses. It is suggested that it may be ilnfective in orig,in. In late stages it is a source of sepsLs.Tlle diverticula when formed m.ay give rise to n-o disturbance for long periods. IIn half of the cases, howvever, there .were symptoms referable to the diverticula. Thlese symptoms were amenable to medical treatment il iiearly all cases. The terminal stage of surgical diverticulitis was present in 5 only out of 100 cases.
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