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Semmelweiss (Paperback)
Louis-Ferdinand Celine; Introduction by Philippe Sollers; Translated by John Harman
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R285
Discovery Miles 2 850
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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Louis-Ferdinand Celine (1894-1961) is best known for his early
novels "Journey to the End of the Night" (1932)--which Charles
Bukowski described as the greatest novel of the past 2,000
years--and "Death on the Installment Plan" (1936), but this
delirious, fanatical "biography" predates them both. The astounding
yet true story of the life of Ignacz Semmelweis provided Celine
with a narrative whose appalling events and bizarre twists would
have lain beyond credibility in a work of pure fiction. Semmelweis,
now regarded as the father of antisepsis, was the first to diagnose
correctly the cause of the staggering mortality rates in the
lying-in hospital at Vienna. However, his colleagues rejected both
his reasoning and his methods, thereby causing thousands of
unnecessary deaths in maternity wards across Europe. This episode,
one of the most infamous in the history of medicine, and its
disastrous effects on Semmelweis himself, are the subject of
Celine's semi-fictional evocation, one in which his violent
descriptive genius is already apparent. The overriding theme of his
later writing--a caustic despair verging on disgust for
humanity--finds its first expression here, and yet he also reveals
a more compassionate aspect to his character. "Semmelweis" was not
published until 1936, after the novels that made Celine famous. "It
is not every day we get a thesis such as Celine wrote on Semmelweis
" wrote Henry Miller of this volume.
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This
IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced
typographical errors, and jumbled words. This book may have
occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor
pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original
artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe
this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections,
have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing
commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We
appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the
preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.
Interspersed With Memoirs Of The English Wife, The Foreign
Mistress, And Various Other Celebrated Characters. In Three
Volumes. Due to the very old age and scarcity of this book, many of
the pages may be hard to read due to the blurring of the original
text, possible missing pages, missing text and other issues beyond
our control.
Interspersed With Memoirs Of The English Wife, The Foreign
Mistress, And Various Other Celebrated Characters. In Three
Volumes. Due to the very old age and scarcity of this book, many of
the pages may be hard to read due to the blurring of the original
text, possible missing pages, missing text and other issues beyond
our control.
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