Acromegaly : a personal experience / by Leonard Portal Mark.

  • Mark, Leonard Portal.
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Acromegaly : a personal experience / by Leonard Portal Mark. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)

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    After this, I was quite a hero at Marseilles, until my brother F. knocked the wind out of my sails by another feat. This was when, one fine day, he swam from the shore right out to the island of the Chateau d'lf, two and a half miles, thus imitating the wonderful performance of Monte Cristo when he escaped from his prison on that island, as described by Alexandre Dumas in his famous novel. When I left the Lycee at eighteen, my prospects were very indefinite, and I became a clerk in my father's office, which was Her Majesty's Consulate. Here I worked at a desk, or, I may now confess, I wasted my time for two years. And, as this is a chapter of confessions, there is still one to be added. Brought up as I was in the land where the tamaris and olive-tree flourish, within sight of the deep azure waves of the Mediterranean, once the home of the troubadours, in my early days the home of Frederic Mistral, who had just given to the world his poem of ' Mireio,' it was litde wonder if I was influenced by my surroundings, and if I lost my heart to 'uno chato di Prouvengo.' At the age of twenty I came to London to study medicine. It was quite a new life for me, and for a long while I went on sighing my soul towards the southern shores.