Wisdom and Woe

• Kindle
• Gutenberg
• Google books
• The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia
• Librivox 6h 50m

Supplemental:

• On Compulsory Vaccination Doyle's letter published 27 July 1887

Trivia:

• The Stark Munro Letters was finished at a sanatorium in the Swiss Alps (later made famous by Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain) while his wife was being treated for tuberculosis. During his stay, Doyle pioneered the trend of Alpine skiing.

Extracts:

• "Now, our doctor was a serious old fellow, much given to metaphysics, and used to talk about original sin." (Redburn, 17)
• "A sick philosopher is incurable.... [b]ecause either he spurns his powder, or, if he take it, it proves a blank cartridge, though the same given to a rustic in like extremity, would act like a charm. I am no materialist; but the mind so acts upon the body, that if the one have no confidence, neither has the other." (Confidence-Man, 16)
• "Well knowing the enthusiasm of the Surgeon for all specimens of morbid anatomy, some of the ward-room officers used to play upon his credulity.... Once, when they had some sago pudding for dinner... they deposited it on the gun-room table, with a note, purporting to come from an eminent physician in Rio, connected with the Grand National Museum on the Praca d’ Acclamacao, begging leave to present the scientific Senhor Cuticle—with the donor’s compliments—an uncommonly fine specimen of a cancer." (White-Jacket, 61)
• "Connected with the sick-bay... was a regular apothecary’s shop.... displaying tiers of shelves on all four sides filled with green bottles and gallipots; beneath were multitudinous drawers bearing incomprehensible gilded inscriptions in abbreviated Latin.... And there you would see him, with a green shade over his eyes, seated on a stool, and pounding his pestle in a great iron mortar that looked like a howitzer, mixing some jallapy compound. A smoky lamp shed a flickering, yellow-fever tinge upon his pallid face and the closely-packed regiments of gallipots." (White-Jacket, 77)
• "Several times when I felt in need of a little medicine... without speaking a word, this cadaverous young man would mix me my potion in a tin cup, and hand it out through the little opening in his door, like the boxed-up treasurer giving you your change at the ticket-office of a theatre...." (White-Jacket, 77)
• "... is it not remarkable, to say the least, that a shore apothecary should actually charge you money—round dollars and cents—for giving you a horrible nausea? ....I always got sea-sick after taking medicine and going aloft with it. Seldom or never did it do me any lasting good." (White-Jacket, 77)
• "A miserable world! Who would take the trouble to make a fortune in it, when he knows not how long he can keep it, for the thousand villains and asses who have the management of railroads and steamboats, and innumerable other vital things in the world." ("Cock-a-doodle-doo!")
• "I mean, sir, the same ancient Catholic Church to which you and I, and Captain Peleg there, and Queequeg here, and all of us, and every mother’s son and soul of us belong; the great and everlasting First Congregation of this whole worshipping world; we all belong to that; only some of us cherish some queer crotchets no ways touching the grand belief; in that we all join hands." (Moby-Dick, 18)
• "Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air." (Moby-Dick, 7)
• "Flask, alas! was a butterless man!" (Moby-Dick, 34)
• "Now then, if you don’t want to share in the glory of my experiment; if you are wholly indifferent to halving its immortal renown; I say, sir, if you care not to be present at the first trial of my Great Hydraulic-Hydrostatic Apparatus for draining swamps and marshes... in that case, sir, you are free to land forthwith." ("The Happy Failure")

This meetup is part of the series Circuses and Snake Oil.

• Kindle: Volume 2, Volume 3, Volume 4
• Gutenberg (all volumes)
• Librivox: Volume 2, Volume 3, Volume 4 4h 09m

Supplemental:

• Tales of Terror (1962) includes adaptation of "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar"
• Two Evil Eyes (1990) movie adaptation of "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar"
• The Fall of the House of Usher (1960) movie adaptation
• The Fall of the House of Usher (2023) Netflix adaptation
• Crimson Peak (2015) loose movie adaption of "The Fall of the House of Usher"
• Stoneheart Asylum (2014) movie adaptation of "The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether"

Extracts:

• "With the measured step and calm collected air of an asylum-physician approaching in the public hall some patient beginning to show indications of a coming paroxysm, Claggart deliberately advanced within short range of Billy, and mesmerically looking him in the eye, briefly recapitulated the accusation." (Billy Budd, 17)
• "The first mesmeristic glance was one of serpent fascination; the last was as the paralyzing lurch of the torpedo fish." (Billy Budd, 19)
• "But, as sometimes men are coffined in a trance, being thereby mistaken for dead; so it is possible to bury a tranced grief in the soul, erroneously supposing that it hath no more vitality of suffering." (Pierre, 21.2)
• "In a side wall... they had an internal vacancy... exactly of the shape and average size of a coffin. In this place... inmates... were confined.... [I]f from the gloomy recesses of the wall was heard the agonized groan... [it] was regarded in the light of a penitent wail from the dead, because... the live body was sepulchred. Sometimes several weeks elapsed ere the disentombment, the penitent being then usually found numb and congealed in all his extremities, like one newly stricken with paralysis." (Israel Potter, 12)
• "I soon fell asleep; but waking suddenly, cramped in every joint from my constrained posture, I thought, for an instant, that I must have been prematurely screwed down in my coffin." (Omoo, 56)
• "Strange! that so many of those who would fain minister to our own health should look so much like invalids themselves." (White-Jacket, 77)

This meetup is part of the series Circuses and Snake Oil.

• Kindle
• Gutenberg
• Google books
• Librivox ~19h 9m

Extracts:

• "Sometimes we chatted, as well as we could, with the natives; and, one day—joy to us!—Po-Po brought in three volumes of Smollett’s novels, which had been found in the chest of a sailor, who some time previous had died on the island." (Omoo, 77)
• "... the sailor, who to-day steers the Hibernia or Unicorn steam-ship across the Atlantic, is a somewhat different man from the exaggerated sailors of Smollett..." (Redburn, 29)
• "These are the fellows that sing you 'The Bay of Biscay Oh!' and 'Here a sheer hulk lies poor Tom Bowling!' 'Cease, rude Boreas, blustering railer!'" (White-Jacket, 3)
• "Mark him, as he advances along the files of old ocean-warriors; mark his debased attitude, his deprecating gestures, his Sawney stare, like a Scotchman in London; his—"cry your merry, noble seignors!" He is wholly nonplussed, and confounded." (White-Jacket, 3)
• "But Cadwallader Cuticle, who, as yet, has been but incidentally alluded to, now deserves a chapter by himself." (White-Jacket, 60)

This meetup is part of the series Circuses and Snake Oil.

• Kindle
• Gutenberg
• Google books
• Librivox ~19h 9m

Extracts:

• "Sometimes we chatted, as well as we could, with the natives; and, one day—joy to us!—Po-Po brought in three volumes of Smollett’s novels, which had been found in the chest of a sailor, who some time previous had died on the island." (Omoo, 77)
• "... the sailor, who to-day steers the Hibernia or Unicorn steam-ship across the Atlantic, is a somewhat different man from the exaggerated sailors of Smollett..." (Redburn, 29)
• "These are the fellows that sing you 'The Bay of Biscay Oh!' and 'Here a sheer hulk lies poor Tom Bowling!' 'Cease, rude Boreas, blustering railer!'" (White-Jacket, 3)
• "Mark him, as he advances along the files of old ocean-warriors; mark his debased attitude, his deprecating gestures, his Sawney stare, like a Scotchman in London; his—"cry your merry, noble seignors!" He is wholly nonplussed, and confounded." (White-Jacket, 3)
• "But Cadwallader Cuticle, who, as yet, has been but incidentally alluded to, now deserves a chapter by himself." (White-Jacket, 60)

This meetup is part of the series Circuses and Snake Oil.