Accessions 10feb24

First published 1905, this edition February 1931. A Xmas gift that I just fished out of the beg (our Xmas was kind of fraught and everything got put in a corner very quickly between road trips and so forth.)

Sir Frederick Treves, 1st Baronet, GCVO, CH, CB, FRCS, KStJ (15 February 1853 – 7 December 1923) was a prominent British surgeon, and an expert in anatomy. Treves was renowned for his surgical treatment of appendicitis, and is credited with saving the life of King Edward VII in 1902.[1] He is also widely known for his friendship with Joseph Merrick, dubbed the “Elephant Man” for his severe deformities.

A review in NATURE from 1905:

AN admirable book; a book written in terse and epigrammatic style, as full of cleverness as anything written by Kipling, and intensely interesting as illustrative of the first impressions conveyed to a highly trained and observant mind by the familiar and superficial details of eastern life. But there is nothing deeper in the book than first impressions, and it was perhaps inevitable that to the student of human nature under those aspects of sorrow and suffering which shadow the sick bed and the hospital, those first impressions should be tinged with the pathos and sadness rather than with the brightness and fulness of the east, and that the general tone of the book should be almost pessimistic. It is as if the lantern had proved to be no better than a common “bull’s eye,” with nothing on the far side but deep shadow and the policeman. Not that the book is wanting in humour by any means. On the contrary, some of the quaint outlines of men and things sketched in by the artist’s hand are as full of humour as anything drawn by Phil May; but it is the grim humour of the man who complained in South Africa of the “plague of women and flies” rather than that of the ordinary holiday tourist infected with the light and sunshine of the eastern world.