The Project Gutenberg EBook of Green Tea; Mr. Justice Harbottle
by Joseph Sheridan LeFanu

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Title: Green Tea; Mr. Justice Harbottle

Author: Joseph Sheridan LeFanu

Release Date: March 19, 2004 [EBook #11635]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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GREEN TEA

1871

MR. JUSTICE HARBOTTLE

1872

By

Joseph Sheridan LeFanu

GREEN TEA

PROLOGUE

_Martin Hesselius, the German Physician_

Though carefully educated in medicine and surgery, I have never
practised either. The study of each continues, nevertheless, to interest
me profoundly. Neither idleness nor caprice caused my secession from the
honourable calling which I had just entered. The cause was a very
trifling scratch inflicted by a dissecting knife. This trifle cost me
the loss of two fingers, amputated promptly, and the more painful loss
of my health, for I have never been quite well since, and have seldom
been twelve months together in the same place.

In my wanderings I became acquainted with Dr. Martin Hesselius, a
wanderer like myself, like me a physician, and like me an enthusiast in
his profession. Unlike me in this, that his wanderings were voluntary,
and he a man, if not of fortune, as we estimate fortune in England, at
least in what our forefathers used to term "easy circumstances." He was
an old man when I first saw him; nearly five-and-thirty years my senior.

In Dr. Martin Hesselius, I found my master. His knowledge was immense,
his grasp of a case was an intuition. He was the very man to inspire a
young enthusiast, like me, with awe and delight. My admiration has stood
the test of time and survived the separation of death. I am sure it was
well-founded.

For nearly twenty years I acted as his medical secretary. His immense
collection of papers he has left in my care, to be arranged, indexed and
bound. His treatment of some of these cases is curious. He writes in two
distinct characters. He describes what he saw and heard as an
intelli