ROUND THE RED LAMP

BEING FACTS AND FANCIES OF MEDICAL LIFE

By SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

THE PREFACE.

[Being an extract from a long and animated correspondence with a friendin America.]

I quite recognise the force of your objection that an invalid or awoman in weak health would get no good from stories which attempt totreat 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 tomake your doctors something more than marionettes, it is quiteessential that you should paint the darker side, since it is that whichis principally presented to the surgeon or physician. He sees manybeautiful things, it is true, fortitude and heroism, love andself-sacrifice; but they are all called forth (as our nobler qualitiesare always called forth) by bitter sorrow and trial. One cannot writeof medical life and be merry over it.

Then why write of it, you may ask? If a subject is painful why treatit at all? I answer that it is the province of fiction to treatpainful things as well as cheerful ones. The story which wiles away aweary hour fulfils an obviously good purpose, but not more so, I hold,than that which helps to emphasise the graver side of life. A talewhich may startle the reader out of his usual grooves of thought, andshocks him into seriousness, plays the part of the alterative and tonicin medicine, bitter to the taste but bracing in the result. There area few stories in this little collection which might have such aneffect, and I have so far shared in your feeling that I have reservedthem from serial publication. In book-form the reader can see thatthey are medical stories, and can, if he or she be so minded, avoidthem.

Yours very truly,
A. CONAN DOYLE.

P. S.—You ask about the Red Lamp. It is the usual sign of the generalpractitioner in England.

CONTENTS.

BEHIND THE TIMES
HIS FIRST OPERATION
A STRAGGLER OF ’15
THE THIRD GENERATION
A FALSE START
THE CURSE OF EVE
SWEETHEARTS
A PHYSIOLOGIST’S WIFE
THE CASE OF LADY SANNOX
A QUESTION OF DIPLOMACY
A MEDICAL DOCUMENT
LOT NO. 249
THE LOS AMIGOS FIASCO
THE DOCTORS OF HOYLAND
THE SURGEON TALKS

ROUND THE RED LAMP.

BEHIND THE TIMES.

My first interview with Dr. James Winter was under dramaticcircumstances. It occurred at two in the morning in the bedroom of anold country house. I kicked him twice on the white waistcoat andknocked off his gold spectacles, while he with the aid of a femaleaccomplice stifled my angry cries in a flannel petticoat and thrust meinto a warm bath. I am told that one of my parents, who happened to bepresent, remarked in a whisper that there was nothing the matter withmy lungs. I cannot recall how Dr. Winter looked at the time, for I hadother things to think of, but his descript

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