The Surgeon of Crowthorne

Simon Winchester’s book, The Professor and the Madman, is a tale of tragedy, insanity, and academia. The book tells the story of two men, Dr. James Murray and Dr. William C. Minor. These men were very similar in nature, but led very different lives due to circumstances of environment and mental health. Dr. Murray was a lifelong academic, always pursuing education. Dr. Minor was a surgeon for the Union Army in the United States Civil War, who grew increasingly madder until he murdered a man in the streets of London, which caused him to be confined in an asylum for almost the rest of his life. Although Dr. Murray and Dr. Minor’s lives and circumstances were quite different, they had one tie which brought them together and cultivated a chance friendship: The Oxford English Dictionary. Their story is an extremely important one, especially when it comes to history,…