Minor hoped that moving to London would ease his mind, but his delusions persisted, and on a dank February morning in 1872, thinking that his Lambeth. The Professor and the Madman, masterfully researched and eloquently written, is an extraordinary tale of madness, genius, and the incredible obsessions of two remarkable men that led to the making of the Oxford English Dictionary - and. A sensitive man, he was appalled at the horrors of the war, and, although he rose to the rank of captain and was regarded as one of the best army surgeons in the country, he was invalided out on full pension in 1871 with what was termed monomania, attributed to "causes arising in the line of duty." William Chester Minor studied medicine at Yale, graduated in 1863, and, with the Civil War raging, enlisted in the Union army in June, four days before the battle of Gettysburg. An extraordinary tale of madness, genius and obsession, discover the. Simon Winchester Viking, 10, pp 207 ISBN 2 6Īn insane homicidal doctor, an autodidactic bank clerk, and a poor labourer do not sound promising candidates as dramatis personae in the story of the creation of one of the world's greatest reference books, but so they turned out to be. In the end, James Murray, the OEDs editor, went to Crowthorne in Berkshire to meet him. The Surgeon of Crowthorne: A Tale of Murder, Madness and the Love of Words
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