Physician's Anthology gathers twenty "storybooks from the physician's desk" into a capacious meditation on medicine as science, vocation, moral trial, and narrative occasion. Its selections range across fiction, memoir, biography, social observation, and medical reflection, juxtaposing dramatic scenes of diagnosis and care with broader accounts of public health, travel, professional ethics, and human vulnerability. The volume's interest lies in this formal variety: medicine emerges not mer...

The narrative unfolds through the eyes of a young protagonist who becomes entwined with a group of medical practitioners and their patients. As the cane passes from one individual to another, it reveals the complexities and challenges faced by those in the medical field, including the ethical dilemmas and personal struggles that come with the practice of medicine. Macmichael uses the cane as a metaphor for the burdens and responsibilities carried by physicians, exploring themes of ambition...

William Macmichael's "The Gold-Headed Cane" intricately weaves a narrative that explores the intertwined lives of characters shaped by the medical profession in the early 19th century. Utilizing a unique structure that blends autobiography, fiction, and philosophical musings, Macmichael crafts a tale rich in historical context, examining the evolution of medicine through the lens of personal and societal troubles. The story is encapsulated in the titular gold-headed cane, a powerful symbol...

William Macmichael, the author of the Gold-Headed Cane, was born at Bridgenorth, in Shropshire, in 1784, and after receiving his education at the grammar school of that town, entered as a student at Christ Church, Oxford, where, after receiving his degree of Master of Arts in 1807, he graduated as a Doctor of Medicine in 1816. In 1811, he was elected to the Radcliffe Travelling Fellowship which owed its foundation to the generosity of Dr. Radcliffe, about whom he writes so delightfully in ...

`My object is to have you fit to live; which, if you are not, I do not desire that you should live at all.' So wrote Lord Chesterfield in one of the most celebrated and controversial correspondences between a father and son. Chesterfield wrote almost daily to his natural son, Philip, from 1737 onwards, providing him with instruction in etiquette and the worldly arts. Praised in their day as a complete manual of education, and despised by Samuel Johnson for teaching `the morals of a whore a...

Describing bizarrely popular Victorian street slang, the madness of crowds, stock market mania (from the South Sea Bubble to Tulip fever), popular fashions, fads, crazes, schemes and scams, this brilliantly entertaining and ever-more relevant study of human folly shows that we are always susceptible to hysteria and bamboozlement.GREAT IDEAS. Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired deb...

The eighteenth century man of letters Horace Walpole is accredited with writing the first Gothic novel, ‘The Castle of Otranto’, as well as producing an accomplished range of literary texts in various genres. This comprehensive eBook presents Walpole’s complete works, with numerous illustrations, rare texts appearing in digital print for the first time, informative introductions and the usual Delphi bonus material. (Version 1)* Beautifully illustrated with images r...

For many millennia, the history of the world has been written by, for, and about men. This fascinating volume takes a different approach, offering brief biographies of dozens of women who have played a role in key world events. Learn more about the influence and impact of ladies like Cleopatra, Joan of Arc, Pocahontas, Marie Antoinette, and many others.

Embark on an enlightening journey through the life and thoughts of one of history's most fascinating figures with "Lady Mary Wortley Montague, Her Life and Letters (1689-1762)." This anthology offers a profound exploration of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's rich legacy, capturing her spirited intellect and daring discourse. Blending personal letters with incisive essays, the collection encapsulates themes of cultural exploration, gender roles, and personal identity against the backdrop of the ...

THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON - All 6 Volumes in One Edition encapsulates a comprehensive and nuanced portrait of one of literature's most formidable figures, Samuel Johnson. This anthology not only traces Johnson's intellectual journeys and personal idiosyncrasies but does so through a mosaic of narratives that capture the spirit of 18th-century English literature. The range of literary styles, from poignant biographical accounts to rich examinations of his literary criticism, illustrates a ...

You were both so entertained with the old stories I told you one evening lately, of what I recollected to have seen and heard from my childhood of the courts of King George the First, and of his son the Prince of Wales, afterwards George the Second, and of the latter's princess, since Queen Caroline; and you expressed such wishes that I would commit those passages (for they are scarce worthy of the title even of anecdotes) to writing, that, having no greater pleasure than to please you bot...

In 1773, James Boswell made a long-planned journey across the Scottish Highlands with his English friend Samuel Johnson; the two spent more than a hundred days together. Their tour of the Hebrides resulted in two books, A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775), a kind of locodescriptive ethnography and Johnson's most important work between his Shakespeare edition and his Lives of the Poets. The other, Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel ...