Crabbe's Practice (1884/1922)

Doings of Doyle - The Arthur Conan Doyle Podcast

This month, we join a young doctor struggling to recruit patients for his medical practice in ‘Crabbe’s Practice’ from 1884, a story that Conan Doyle rewrote in its entirety in 1922.

You can read the two versions of the story here.

Or listen to an audiobook version of the 1922 version here.

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Synopsis

When they were fellow medical students at Edinburgh University, Robert Hudson had foreseen a successful and rewarding career for the eccentric but brilliant John Waterhouse Crabbe. His prophecy appears to have been fulfilled when Crabbe invites Hudson to stay at his impressive and well-appointed residence-cum-practice at Bridport. All, however, is not as it seems: Crabbe is the area’s least regarded doctor, despite his local family connections, and he is desperate need of a plan to attract patients and stave off bankruptcy. Hudson provides an answer: he will play the role of a well-heeled gentleman who is suddenly taken ill on Crabbe’s doorstep and then cured within. Crabbe then further dramatises the plot to involve Hudson’s miraculous recovery from a staged drowning. What could possibly go wrong?

Next time on Doings of Doyle

We look at one of the last stories penned by Conan Doyle, his Regency short story ‘The End of Devil Hawker' (1930). You can read the story here.

Acknowledgements

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Image credits: Thanks to Alexis Barquin at The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopaedia for permission to reproduce these images. Please support the encyclopaedia at www.arthur-conan-doyle.com.

Music credit: Sneaky Snitch Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

YouTube video created by @headlinerapp.