The blot upon the brain : studies in history & psychology.

  • Ireland, William W. (William Wotherspoon), 1832-1909.
Date:
1893
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The blot upon the brain : studies in history & psychology. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    Opinions of the Press—continued. safely be put into the hands of the most confirmed novel reader, nor will such a one readily lay it aside till he has finished the very last page.—Scots Magazine. War, intrigue, treachery, plots most cunning and most diabolical, daring actions, instances of devoted love, go to make up a really excellent romance. —Haddingtonshire Advertiser, The wonderful man whose genius for conquest brought him empire, and whose elevated understanding emancipated him from the influence of his surround- ings by inspiring him with a broad and generous philosophy immeasurably in advance of his epoch, is presented in these pages with fair accuracy, and his per- sonality is so deftly merged into the tale that it cannot escape due appreciation. The hero of the little drama is Stephen Ashbourne, an Englishman, who, having proceeded to India on a commercial enterprise, is prevented from returning owing to a disaster to the vessel which conveyed him ; and who, having some knowledge of gunnery, as then understood, joins many members of the ship's crew in the service of Akber. He has numerous surprising experiences.—Broad Arrow and Aural and Military Gazette. Dr. Ireland may be congratulated on having succeeded where more than one big man before him has failed. It is not given to many, even among the great ones of literature, to write in a way acceptable to men and to boys, to produce work which may be criticised in the smoking-room of the ' Athenaeum ' or the ' Savile,' and which may also be trusted to keep the youngsters out of mischief of a wet afternoon. Charles Kingsley, in his ' Water Babies,' did not succeed in interesting the play-room ; while, on the other hand, who remembers anything, except through ' Robinson Crusoe,' of Daniel Defoe ? The work now before us has, however, one material disadvantage in its very excellences, inevitably suggesting as it does comparison with the tales of Louis Stevenson and the romances of Walter Scott. It is no small praise to say that, without being less readable, its tone is healthier than that of the ' Master of Ballantrae,' while the description of Akber in his son's camp has something of the ring of the 'Talisman' about it, recalling indeed one of Scott's finest passages about the great Saladin. Dr. Ireland has the characteristic defect of his great predecessor. Stephen Ash- bourne, the hero of 'Golden Bullets,' is about as colourless a person as Ivanhoe, and just as we rise from Scott with memories of Di Vernon and of Rebecca, of Effie Deans, or of Lucy, rather than of his titular heroes, so, on closing ' Golden Bullets,' we recall not so much Stephen Ashbourne or Benedict de Goes, or even Akber himself, as the heroic Sultana, the Circassian bride of the Emperor, and the two Eastern wives of Ashbourne, all of them sketches full of vivacity and insight, pleasant and piquant withal. . . . Those were days when each man had to be something of everything, when there was a touch of the statesman about the ' man on 'change,' and more than a touch of the warrior about the officers and seamen of our mercantile marine. It is not too much to say that Dr. Ireland makes these stirring days re-live for us in his pages, nor will the veriest schoolboy fail to catch some just idea of everyday life in a century which knew not in India of the English raj. . . . Abul Fazl, Chand Bibi the Hindoo Joan of Arc, and the savage Jehangir, are all historical characters, and are well introduced. The character of the last-name d is limned with something of indecision, but Jehangir is an historical problem, one of those rulers whose virtues and vices operated in somewhat unexpected direc- tions, and who gave themselves, before coming to the throne, a more evil nam than they afterwards deserved. Among the ' side views ' which this admirable romance affords us. we get a fine sketch of Agra in the days of its splendour (p. 91), of life within a Court seraglio (p. 201), and, above all, a most interesting attempt to realise for us the daily routine of an Eastern home.—Journal of Mental Science, January, 1891. Better known to our profession as the author of 'Through the Ivorj I and other brilliant studies in mental disease and therapeutics, Dr. Ireland is not •1 D