“He unwound the handkerchief, and held out his hand” — an illustration (1892) by Sidney Paget for Arthur Conan Doyle's “The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb.” Photographic reproduction of watercolor. Click on image to enlarge it.
Passage Illustrated
“That’s better!” said he. “And now, Doctor, perhaps you would kindly attend to my thumb, or rather to the place where my thumb used to be.”
He unwound the handkerchief and held out his hand. It gave even my hardened nerves a shudder to look at it. There were four protruding fingers and a horrid red, spongy surface where the thumb should have been. It had been hacked or torn right out from the roots.
“Good heavens!” I cried, “this is a terrible injury. It must have bled considerably.”
Scanned image, caption, and commentary by George P. Landow. [You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the image and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]
Bibliography
Doyle, Arthur Conan. The Original Illustrated Sherlock Holmes. “Reproduced from the original publication in The Strand Magazine with the classic illustrations by Sidney Paget.” Edison, New Jersey: Castle Books, [after 1954]. Internet Archive version of a copy donated by Friends of the San Francisco Library. Web.
Last modified 1 December 2013