From the Library

“Though Conan Doyle’s celebrated failure as a medical practitioner appears to be exaggerated, it seems clear that he had little luck, and took as little pleasure, in his chosen career. (At least one writer has suggested that Conan Doyle might have managed to kill a patient, through Charles Bovary-like ineptitude for more sinister motives; he subsequently married the dead man’s sister and took control of the income that she inherited from her brother.) Like so many Scotsmen of his time, those engineers, overseers, managers, merchant princes, foot soldiers, and rationalizers of the Empire, Conan Doyle had a powerful taste for adventure. In seeking to elude the fate that Waller, his personal Moriarity, had determined for him, Conan Doyle made two inconclusive or ill fated attempts at becoming a ship’s doctor and a rash and doomed decision to abandon general practice for the study, in Germany, of ophthalmology, in spite of the fact he barely understood German.” (

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Acute central retinal artery occlusion, a painless monocular reduction of vision, usually results in a poor visual outcome. The efficacy of current treatments, including paracentesis of the anterior chamber, acetazolamide, massage of the eye, heparin, and …