Lot No. 249" appears in a collection of short stories titled Round the Red Lamp: Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life, but its only connection to the sometimes painful realism of the stories about medical problems and those who treat them is that its central character, one Abercrombie Smith, is a medical student studying hard for his exams at Old College, Oxford.

Nevertheless, Arthur Conan Doyle's "Preface" to this collection addresses a question about fiction that is quite important, especially about popular fiction. Why, he was asked, should anyone want to write about unpleasant, even scary subjects? He offers a couple of reasons. One has to do with seriousness of purpose: "If you deal with this life at all. . . and if you are anxious to make your doctors something more than marionettes, it is quite essential that you should paint the darker side."

That is all...