Adventures in Russia, 1881 , livre ebook

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Here is the second of the "lost" diaries of young Arthur Conan Doyle, written in 1881 while he was a twenty-two-year-old student at the University of Edinburgh Medical School. In this rollicking story of high adventure, Arthur Conan Doyle serves as a British spy along with the legendary Doctor Joseph Bell - who became the real-life inspiration for the world's most famous literary detective, Sherlock Holmes. This diary details how Doyle and Dr. Bell journey to Russia on a secret forensic mission to save Europe from war. Peopled with Doyle's real-life contemporaries - including Dostoyesky and Rasputin, it is an exciting mix of murder, mystery, literary history, and humour sure to please Sherlock Holmes fans everywhere!
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Date de parution

12 décembre 2017

EAN13

9781787051546

Langue

English

The Diary of Young Arthur Conan Doyle
Adventures in Russia, 1881
Edited by Dr. John Raffensperger & Richard Krevolin




First edition published in 2017
Copyright © 2017 Richard Krevolin and John Raffensperger
The right of Richard Krevolin and John Raffensperger to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998.
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without express prior written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted except with express prior written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended). Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damage.
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious or used fictitiously. Except for certain historical personages, any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Any opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of MX Publishing.
MX Publishing
335 Princess Park Manor, Royal Drive,
London, N11 3GX
www.mxpublishing.co.uk
Covers painted by Ewa Czarniecka, graphic design Kyra Dunn, compilation Brian Belanger.




To our esteemed editor, Nancy Cohen, our wonderful agent, Paula Munier, Renee Braeunig, Melanie Jappy, Kathy Copas, Colleen Sell, Dr. Wally Duff, Dr. Glenn Shepard, John Haslett, Penny Macleod, Steve Callender, Katja Bressette, Katia Haddidian, Coach Bob Orgovan, and the Sanibel writing group four.



Editors’ Note
In 1880, Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a diary of his adventures as a ship’s surgeon on an Arctic whaler. It is a true story and that diary has been available to Sherlock Holmes fans for many years.
Until now, however, three of Doyle’s other diaries about his international adventures had gone undiscovered. In a historic twist of fate, we were fortunate to recently find these three ‘lost’ diaries hidden in the compartment of a trunk purchased at auction and said to include some of the personal effects of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
The first diary contains stories from 1878 when Doyle was a nineteen-year-old student at the University of Edinburgh Medical School. These tales of high adventure begin with Conan Doyle’s clerkship under the legendary Doctor Joseph Bell and follow the duo (and other well-known personalities) on their journey to America for a secret forensic mission to solve a string of grisly and mysterious murders.
The third, soon-to-be-published, diary in this trio of mayhem, murder, and medicine adventure stories, is a record of Doyle’s experiences in 1883. It includes personal details from Doyle’s second trip with Dr. Bell from Scotland to America, by which time he had become a doctor in his own right.
In the diary you now hold, the second of the ‘lost’ three, Doyle recorded his 1881 journey with Dr. Joseph Bell, this time to Russia, immediately following his graduation. It reveals how, despite initially being invited to teach the antiseptic technique at the medical school in St. Petersburg, the two became embroiled in nefarious conspiracies that could have engulfed Europe in a deadly war. If not for their abilities to discern all details and leave no stone unturned, we might have had a very different twentieth century...
We are including the following points of information with the hope that they offer some context and clarity about young Arthur Conan Doyle and these journeys. There is some controversy as to whether Bell was the inspiration for Sherlock Holmes, though a handwritten letter from Arthur Conan Doyle to Dr. Bell, which is housed in the archives [RS L1 Box B] of the Royal College of Surgeons in Edinburgh, states, “It is most certainly to you that I owe Sherlock Holmes.” These three diaries indicate a somewhat thorny relationship between Dr. Joseph Bell and Arthur Conan Doyle. In his own words, Doyle was a mediocre medical student. But Bell observed in him talents that went beyond the usual student, hence his choice of Doyle to be his outpatient clerk. Dr. Bell, a third-generation Edinburgh surgeon and true medical aristocrat, could be hard on students. Doyle was acutely aware of his own humble background. His father was addicted to alcohol and his mother, whom he affectionately referred to as ‘Mam,’ took in lodgers to support the family. It is quite possible that, especially after the first trip to America, Doyle hoped Bell would become a replacement ‘father figure,’ but Bell continued to treat him as any other student. Doyle initially resented what he perceived as ‘humiliation’ by Bell. As his ability and confidence increased, a warmer relationship, based on mutual respect, grew between the two of them. These diaries demonstrate Dr. Bell’s medical and surgical skills. He was one of the first to use Lister’s antiseptic technique to prevent infection in wounds. Bell pioneered operations to save the limbs of children afflicted with tuberculosis of the bones and joints. He was in great demand to lecture and demonstrate his techniques to foreign surgeons. He was also an author, the first to support Nightingale nurses on his wards, and a forensic consultant to local police and Scotland Yard. While the diaries are also important because they document medical and surgical practices during the 19 th century - when there were no X-rays, scans, or laboratory tests to guide doctors - this particular journal also explains Sherlock Holmes use of cocaine. At the time Doyle wrote this diary, many physicians, including Sigmund Freud, viewed cocaine as a panacea. It was also used as a powerful local anaesthetic. Surgeons who self-experimented with cocaine as a local anaesthetic quickly became addicted to the drug. Though he wrote in English, Arthur Conan Doyle was fluent in French and German and quickly learned basic Russian. Given that many of the entries in the diary appear to have been written during times of stress or several days after an event, and considering the great upheavals that have taken place in Russia since his visit, you may find an occasional minor variation in spelling. Additionally, in Great Britain (unlike in America or Russia), though physicians are called doctor, surgeons are referred to as mister. Because the ‘lost’ diaries traverse locales, you may notice the use of both titles depending upon who is addressing Doyle.
That said, it is with great joy that we now share with you, dear reader, the story of young Arthur Conan Doyle’s adventures during those fateful months in 1881 as detailed in his second of three fabulously exciting ‘lost journals.’ We hope you enjoy the journey.
- Dr. John Raffensperger and Richard Krevolin,
Oxford, England, 9 October 2016.



7 June 1881
Despite my adventures in America with Dr. Joseph Bell, and even though I am a senior and will soon graduate, he continues to humiliate me in front of the entire class for my trivial errors in diagnosis. Professor Bell is a brilliant diagnostician and the most popular teacher in the medical school, but I sometimes feel like lashing out at him with curses and expletives.
Take today’s Friday afternoon clinic: Dr. Bell walked in at exactly two o’clock sharp. Sun streamed through the sooty windows of the great surgical amphitheatre of the Royal Edinburgh Infirmary. Medical students filled tiers of hard-backed seats overlooking the ‘cockpit,’ which doubled as operating theater, as well as Bell’s clinic.
I had recently finished my term as Dr. Bell’s clerk, and now, another poor, trembling third year student, Josiah Weeks, was in my place, organizing patients to see the professor. I pitied poor Weeks and did not envy his position, although I could sorely use the extra funds from the measly salary that accompanies the post.
There was a sprinkling of visiting doctors from all of Europe, as well as America, to observe Dr. Bell’s brilliant operating skills and his diagnostic acumen. Dmitry Gorchakov of the St. Petersburg faculty of Medicine and Surgery, a great bear of a man with a bushy, black beard, had taken notes during clinics and operating sessions for the past week. He was especially interested in Dr. Bell’s operation for joint excision in cases of tuberculosis and injuries. The Russian spoke broken English with a thick, guttural accent, but I suspected he understood our language better than he let on.
Meanwhile, I was idly thinking about Miss Jean McGill, a pretty new nurse who was sitting a few rows back, when Dr. Bell turned his keen gaze upon me. “Mr. Doyle, if you please, what causes Mrs. Connor’s cough?”
Mrs. Connor, the patient in a plain, black skirt, black coat, black hat, and black, ankle-high shoes, was spare and stooped with a sad, sharp, lined face and nearly-white hair. She had walked haltingly, resting on the arm of Weeks, the third year clerk, to a chair in front of us students. Connor could have been anyone’s grandmother. Weeks, a nervous boy of perhaps nineteen years, had stammered out the information that Mrs. Connor’s cough had resisted all treatment for the past half-decade.
For the life of me, I couldn’t think of a plausible diagnosis. Aye, I had seen several coal miners with such a cough, but never a woman. The patient hung her head and seemed to gaze at the floor, when she took a rag from her handbag, covered her mouth, and coughed out a gob of bloody phlegm.
I mumbled, “Well, sir, um, eh, she could have tuberculosis or chronic bronchitis?”
“Indeed, Mr. Doyle.” He paused for a painful moment. “I’d recommend visiting the bursar’s office this afternoon,” he advised.
“Why, sir?”
“Well, laddie,

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