A Burnt-Out Case follows Querry, a celebrated European architect of churches who has lost all feeling: for his work, for women, for God and for himself. Travelling as far as the river boats will take him, he arrives at a leproserie deep in the Belgian Congo run by a community of missionary fathers and by Dr Colin, an atheist physician devoted to his patients.
Medical tag
Leprosy
Leprosy (Hansen's disease), leper colonies and stigma.
Works
Christ Legends is a book of eleven stories in which the Swedish novelist Selma Lagerlöf retells and invents legends about the life of Jesus, from the night of His birth to the Crucifixion and after. Some come from old Christian tradition, some from folk tales, and some are her own; all are told in a simple, warm voice suited to reading aloud.
Jewish Antiquities is Josephus' twenty-book retelling of Jewish history from creation to the outbreak of revolt against Rome in 66 CE. It is not simply a paraphrase of the Bible, though its first half follows Genesis through the monarchy, exile and restoration.
Sulpitius Severus's Life of St. Martin made Martin of Tours one of the defining saints of the Latin West. The narrative begins with Martin's birth in Pannonia, upbringing in Italy, and reluctant military service.
St. Thomas Becket and the Canterbury Miracles traces a murder into a medical archive. Becket's political story is familiar: the brilliant royal chancellor becomes archbishop of Canterbury, clashes with Henry II over ecclesiastical liberty and royal jurisdiction, goes into exile, returns under tense compromise, and is killed in the cathedral on 29 December 1170 by knights acting in the atmosphere of the king's fury.
The Arabian Nights Entertainments is Andrew Lang's 1898 selection of the Thousand and One Nights for children, retold in English from Antoine Galland's early eighteenth-century French version. The frame story comes first.
The Bible is the sacred scripture of Judaism and Christianity, and the reference edition presents the King James Version of 1611, the most influential translation in English. It is a library rather than a single book.
The Black Arrow is set in England during the Wars of the Roses, when York and Lancaster fought for the crown and lesser lords changed sides as fortune moved. Richard Shelton, called Dick, is the young ward of Sir Daniel Brackley, a grasping knight who holds the Moat House at Tunstall and has grown rich by seizing other men's lands.
The Koran, or Quran ('recitation'), is the central scripture of Islam. It consists of 114 chapters called suras, of very unequal length, each made up of verses (ayat).
Montesquieu's The Spirit of the Laws (De l'esprit des lois), published anonymously at Geneva in 1748 after many years of reading and travel, asks why the laws of different peoples differ and what makes them fit or unfit for those who live under them. His answer is that laws are relations: they must suit the form of government and also the climate and soil, the religion, commerce, manners and size of a nation.
This is the first of three volumes of Edward William Lane's translation of The Thousand and One Nights, made directly from the Arabic of the Cairo (Bulaq) printed edition and published in parts from 1838. The library text is the 1859 revision edited by his nephew Edward Stanley Poole, in the 1912 Chatto & Windus reissue with a preface by Stanley Lane-Poole.
Adam Smith's An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, published in London by Strahan and Cadell on 9 March 1776, asks what makes a nation rich and what policies help or hinder that growth. Smith's answer is that wealth is not a store of gold and silver but the annual produce of a nation's labour, and that it grows chiefly through the division of labour, the accumulation of capital and the freedom to trade.
Passages
- A Burnt-Out Case, Early chapters (Part 1)
Dr Colin explains to Querry the meaning of a burnt-out case and describes the mutilations left after the disease has run its course.
- Christ Legends, The Wise Men's Well
The three wise men of Gebas, one old, one leprous and one scorned as a foreigner, are healed and renewed by the Child.
- Christ Legends, Saint Veronica's Kerchief, sections III–IV and IX
The Emperor's disfiguring illness, the despair of his physicians and court, and his healing on seeing the kerchief.
- Jewish Antiquities, Books 3-4, Mosaic legislation
Josephus summarizes laws about purity, childbirth, skin disease, bodily emissions and priestly inspection, translating ritual categories for Greek readers.
- Life of St. Martin, Dialogue tradition: leper at Paris
Martin's kiss of a leper reverses stigma through touch, making the leper's isolation and bodily revulsion part of the healing scene.
- St. Thomas Becket and the Canterbury Miracles, Benedict and William miracle collections
The collections record claims involving fever, blindness, paralysis, seizures, madness, leprosy, wounds, and accidents with unusually concrete social detail.
- The Arabian Nights Entertainments, The Story of the Greek King and the Physician Douban
Douban cures the king's leprosy with a drug in the handle of a polo club, is executed through the vizir's slander, and kills the king by a poisoned book.
- The Bible, Leviticus 13–14
Laws for priestly diagnosis, isolation outside the camp and purification of 'leprosy' in people, garments and houses.
- The Black Arrow, Book I, Chapter VII
A blind leper with bell and staff crosses the heath and pursues the boys; he is revealed as Sir Daniel in disguise.
- The Koran, Sura 3:49; 5:110
Jesus heals the blind and the leper and raises the dead by God's permission.
- The Spirit of the Laws, Book XIV, ch. 11
Laws in relation to the distempers of the climate: leprosy and the laws of Moses, the disease brought from America, and the military cordon against plague.
- The Thousand and One Nights (Lane's translation, Volume I), Chapter II, Story of King Yoonán and the Sage Doobán
Doobán cures the King's leprosy with drugs concealed in a goff-stick, is executed on the Wezeer's slander, and kills the King with a book whose leaves are poisoned.
- The Wealth of Nations, Book V, ch. i, Part III, Art. II
Mental torpor from repetitive work likened to mutilation, and public instruction compared to preventing a leprosy from spreading among the people.
Quotes
“Alas, poor soul, and we should rather pity him!”
“Spare me, and so may God spare thee; and destroy me not, lest God destroy thee.”