Reviews for The Stark Munro Letters

The average rating for The Stark Munro Letters based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-08-13 00:00:00 Yegyé Alfredo Navarro Noguerol I'm surprised that this book doesn't seem to attracted any other reviews, though most of ACD's other little known works have done so. If you know and like ACD's other work, then this is a truly fascinating book. It's a series of twelve letters, supposedly written by a young doctor to a friend and former fellow student about his early struggles in medical practice. According to ACD himself (I haven't checked this against any of the biographies) it's based, to a very large extent, on ACD's own experiences as a doctor, before he gave up medicine for literature. It features an array of curious characters, most particularly the larger-than-life Cullingworth, who was apparently a real person, with whom the narrator was for a time in partnership. The book paints an interesting, and somewhat dismaying, picture of late 19the century, pre-NHS, medical practice, when every GP was, in effect, a sole trader, living on his wits, and getting patients as best he could. In some ways, it's a scaled-up version of ACD's short story 'Crabbe's Practice'. The book also contains ACD's ruminations on religion (he was a theist, but unattached to any church) which have a quaint period flavour. (Evidently, it was written before ACD became obsessed with Spiritualism.) One very strange feature of the book (I don't think this is a spoiler, in the ordinary sense) is that, although the book is closely based on ACD's own experiences, it ends with a footnote stating that the narrator and his newly married wife were killed in a railway accident. It would be interesting to know exactly what the author was getting at; perhaps it's no more than his way of saying that he had finally abandoned medicine.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-05-11 00:00:00 Alicia Fehrman This was a very interesting story depicting the life of a new doctor in 1882 England. The moral fibre of the doctor was impeccable and showed such a stark contrast to thinkers of today. It made me wonder if society has intellectually lessened over the past 137 years. Just listen to any British or American politician and learn how morality has somehow become flexible and debased.