{"product_id":"2940013772915","title":"In a Glass Darkly","description":"Though carefully educated in medicine and surgery, I have never\u003cbr\u003epractised either. The study of each continues, nevertheless, to interest\u003cbr\u003eme profoundly. Neither idleness nor caprice caused my secession from the\u003cbr\u003ehonourable calling which I had just entered. The cause was a very\u003cbr\u003etrifling scratch inflicted by a dissecting knife. This trifle cost me\u003cbr\u003ethe loss of two fingers, amputated promptly, and the more painful loss\u003cbr\u003eof my health, for I have never been quite well since, and have seldom\u003cbr\u003ebeen twelve months together in the same place.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn my wanderings I became acquainted with Dr. Martin Hesselius, a\u003cbr\u003ewanderer like myself, like me a physician, and like me an enthusiast in\u003cbr\u003ehis profession. Unlike me in this, that his wanderings were voluntary,\u003cbr\u003eand he a man, if not of fortune, as we estimate fortune in England, at\u003cbr\u003eleast in what our forefathers used to term \"easy circumstances.\" He was\u003cbr\u003ean old man when I first saw him; nearly five-and-thirty years my senior.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn Dr. Martin Hesselius, I found my master. His knowledge was immense,\u003cbr\u003ehis grasp of a case was an intuition. He was the very man to inspire a\u003cbr\u003eyoung enthusiast, like me, with awe and delight. My admiration has stood\u003cbr\u003ethe test of time and survived the separation of death. I am sure it was\u003cbr\u003ewell-founded.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor nearly twenty years I acted as his medical secretary. His immense\u003cbr\u003ecollection of papers he has left in my care, to be arranged, indexed and\u003cbr\u003ebound. His treatment of some of these cases is curious. He writes in two\u003cbr\u003edistinct characters. He describes what he saw and heard as an\u003cbr\u003eintelligent layman might, and when in this style of narrative he had\u003cbr\u003eseen the patient either through his own hall-door, to the light of day,\u003cbr\u003eor through the gates of darkness to the caverns of the dead, he returns\u003cbr\u003eupon the narrative, and in the terms of his art and with all the force\u003cbr\u003eand originality of genius, proceeds to the work of analysis, diagnosis\u003cbr\u003eand illustration.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHere and there a case strikes me as of a kind to amuse or horrify a lay\u003cbr\u003ereader with an interest quite different from the peculiar one which it\u003cbr\u003emay possess for an expert. With slight modifications, chiefly of\u003cbr\u003elanguage, and of course a change of names, I copy the following. The\u003cbr\u003enarrator is Dr. Martin Hesselius. I find it among the voluminous notes\u003cbr\u003eof cases which he made during a tour in England about sixty-four years\u003cbr\u003eago.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt is related in series of letters to his friend Professor Van Loo of\u003cbr\u003eLeyden. The professor was not a physician, but a chemist, and a man who\u003cbr\u003eread history and metaphysics and medicine, and had, in his day, written\u003cbr\u003ea play.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe narrative is therefore, if somewhat less valuable as a medical\u003cbr\u003erecord, necessarily written in a manner more likely to interest an\u003cbr\u003eunlearned reader.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThese letters, from a memorandum attached, appear to have been returned\u003cbr\u003eon the death of the professor, in 1819, to Dr. Hesselius. They are\u003cbr\u003ewritten, some in English, some in French, but the greater part in\u003cbr\u003eGerman. I am a faithful, though I am conscious, by no means a graceful\u003cbr\u003etranslator, and although here and there I omit some passages, and\u003cbr\u003eshorten others, and disguise names, I have interpolated nothing.","brand":"WDS Publishing","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47070268424432,"sku":"2940013772915","price":0.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940013772915_p0.jpg?v=1763590077","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940013772915","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}