Читать книгу Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters - Daniel Stashower, Исмаил Шихлы - Страница 116

Dont send me any more postcards, they are most foul inventions for depriving an honest man of his letters. I would sooner wait a little longer and get a decent epistle. I have been very busy lately and hardly had time to write. I assure you I earn my two pounds a month. In the morning I generally go out with RR in his gig and do the rounds till dinner at two. This is an innovation and deprives me of any leisure. From dinner to tea I brew horrible draughts and foul mixtures for the patients (I concocted as many as 42 today). After tea patients begin to drop in and we experiment on them until nine, and then we have supper and comparative peace till twelve when we generally turn in; so you see we have plenty to do, and the life is none the worse for that. I visit a few patients every day too, and get a good deal of experience.

Mrs Hoare is a charming woman, very pretty, very well informed, very fond of RR. She smokes her cigar of an evening as regularly as I do my pipe, and never looks so well as when she has it between her teeth. A jolly little lady.

Hoare has had some aspiring geniuses as assistants in his day. One of them administered Linimentum Aconiti in doses of two tablespoonsful 3 times a day. In spite of his exertions and the medicine the patient died soon afterwards, and a benighted coroner had the bad taste to insist on holding an inquest, which brought in a verdict of homicide, and only that they hushed the matter up he would have picked oakum.

I have been experimenting upon myself with Gelsemium. Mrs H said she would write to you unless I stopped it. I increased my dose until I reached 200 minims, and had some curious physiological results. I drew them up and sent them to the British Medical but I’m afraid they won’t put them in.*

There is a pestilent little quack here, or rather a firm, Smith and Hues. The latter is a qualified man but a sleeping partner. Smith is the perfect type of a quack. I have written out a most preposterous case and sent it to the Lancet in Hues’ name. It is told most gravely and scientifically. If the Doctor sees anything about an eel in the Lancet that is the letter. RR is in ecstasies about it. ;

No, Lottie, 14. I’ll explain why in my next letter. ;