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CRABBE'S PRACTICE

Arthur Conan Doyle

I wonder how many men remember Tom Waterhouse Crabbe,
student of medicine in this city. He was a man whom it was not easy
to forget if you had once come across him. There was a bold
originality in his thought, and a convincing earnestness in his mode of
expressing it, which pointed to something higher than mere
cleverness. He studied spasmodically and irregularly, yet he was one
of the first men — certainly the most independent thinker — of his
year. Poor Crabbe — there was something delightfully original even
in his mistakes. I can remember how he laboriously explained to his
examiner that the Spanish fly grew in Spain. And how he gave five
drops of Sabin oil credit for producing that state which it is usually
believed to rectify.
Crabbe was not at all the type of man whom we usually
associate with the word "genius". He was not pale nor thin, neither
was his hair of abnormal growth. On the contrary he was a powerfully
built, square-shouldered fellow, full of vitality, with a voice like a
bull, and a laugh that could be heard across the Meadows. A muscular
Christian too, and one of the best Rugby forwards in Edinburgh.
Crabbe took his dergee a year before I did, and went down to a
large port in England with the intention of setting up there. A brilliant
career seemed to lie before him, for besides his deep knowledge of
medicine, acquired in the most practical school in the world, he had
that indescribable manner which gains a patient's confidence at once.
Crab went down with his young degree, and a still younger
wife, to settle in this town, which we will call Brisport. I was acting
as assistant to a medical man in Manchester, and heard little from my
former friend, save that he had set up in considerable style, and was
making a bid for a high-class practice at once. I read one most deep
and erudite paper in a medical journal, entitled "Curious
Development of a Discopherous Bone in the Stomach of a Duck",
which emanated from his pen, but beyond this and some remarks on
the embryology of fishes he seemed strangely quiet.
One day to my surprise I received a telegram from Mrs. Crabbe
begging me to run down to Brisport and see her husband, as he was