The real Dr. Funk - Tiki Drinks and Food

T TikiTomD Grand Member (6 years) Flagler Beach, FL Joined: Sep 20, 2009 Posts: 700	T TikiTomD Posted posted on Mon, Apr 2, 2012 8:52 AM You might be quite surprised, as I was, to learn that Dr. Funk is a major character in a work of contemporary fiction. It seems a Yorkshire physician, Dr. Richard Woodhead, had doubts about the prevailing assumption that the frail health of Robert Louis Stevenson was due to pulmonary tuberculosis (consumption). When he retired from his hospital post in 1997, Dr. Woodhead pursued all the available medical evidence and concluded that he couldn’t prove the issue one way or the other. So he decided to write a book that explored it through the first-person fictional narratives of the principal five doctors who treated Robert Louis Stevenson in real life. Dr. Woodhead explains his interesting approach on this web page, excerpted in part here... As so much of this was conjecture, I decided that fiction would be the best and most interesting way of releasing speculation. I began to write the story through the eyes of five physicians - real people - who treated Stevenson in various parts of the world. Their fictional first-person narratives allowed me to imagine how these doctors would have seen and influenced Stevenson, and how he would have influenced them. The fiction had to be based on a matrix of factual information in such a way that everything described was possible and believable... Information about Bernard Funk was more limited but the staff of the Apia Public Library kindly sent me a photograph and short biography from the 1907 edition of The Cyclopedia of Samoa. . The resulting book was The Strange Case of R.L. Stevenson, published by Luath Press Limited in 2001... I purchased a copy and found it an interesting read. The book is in five sections, each section containing in multiple chapters the first person account of one of RLS’s physicians. Dr. Funk’s section is last as is chronologically appropriate. From all that I have learned about Dr. Funk and his relationship with RLS, Dr. Funk’s narrative is quite believable. For a sense of the book, here is Dr. Funk at home one evening, making a cocktail... Even the Bum should be impressed by Dr. Funk painstakingly measuring each of his cocktail ingredients... The book is available new or used at Amazon.com, used from Barnes & Noble, and new directly from the publisher at Luath Press Limited. -Tom

You might be quite surprised, as I was, to learn that Dr. Funk is a major character in a work of contemporary fiction.

It seems a Yorkshire physician, Dr. Richard Woodhead, had doubts about the prevailing assumption that the frail health of Robert Louis Stevenson was due to pulmonary tuberculosis (consumption). When he retired from his hospital post in 1997, Dr. Woodhead pursued all the available medical evidence and concluded that he couldn’t prove the issue one way or the other. So he decided to write a book that explored it through the first-person fictional narratives of the principal five doctors who treated Robert Louis Stevenson in real life. Dr. Woodhead explains his interesting approach on this web page, excerpted in part here...

As so much of this was conjecture, I decided that fiction would be the best and most interesting way of releasing speculation. I began to write the story through the eyes of five physicians - real people - who treated Stevenson in various parts of the world. Their fictional first-person narratives allowed me to imagine how these doctors would have seen and influenced Stevenson, and how he would have influenced them. The fiction had to be based on a matrix of factual information in such a way that everything described was possible and believable... Information about Bernard Funk was more limited but the staff of the Apia Public Library kindly sent me a photograph and short biography from the 1907 edition of The Cyclopedia of Samoa.
.

The resulting book was The Strange Case of R.L. Stevenson, published by Luath Press Limited in 2001...

I purchased a copy and found it an interesting read. The book is in five sections, each section containing in multiple chapters the first person account of one of RLS’s physicians. Dr. Funk’s section is last as is chronologically appropriate. From all that I have learned about Dr. Funk and his relationship with RLS, Dr. Funk’s narrative is quite believable. For a sense of the book, here is Dr. Funk at home one evening, making a cocktail...

Even the Bum should be impressed by Dr. Funk painstakingly measuring each of his cocktail ingredients...

The book is available new or used at Amazon.com, used from Barnes & Noble, and new directly from the publisher at Luath Press Limited.

-Tom

Post #630951 by TikiTomD on Mon, Apr 2, 2012 8:52 AM