The Story of San Michele

Axel Munthe’s autobiography offers insight into his professional life as a doctor in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, his life anecdotes ranging from the lighthearted to the deeply serious.

Titled after the ruined Italian chapel Munthe encountered and desired to renovate, these memoirs span a series of stories taking place over decades. Munthe does not discuss his personal life or family, instead opting to describe the various medical procedures and patients he encountered as a doctor working in a range of different countries. Although some of the author’s recollections are clearly fictional – including a posthumous chapter set at the gates at heaven – there are several chapters both eye-opening and sobering for their seriousness.

The constraints of the medicine of the time are revealed in the frank recollections of patients whose lives could not be saved, with Munthe instead opting to lessen their suffering as they struggled through the later, painful stages of illness. Although the author was best-known in life as the personal physician and confidante to Queen Victoria of Sweden, he does not mention her directly by name, though her presence is felt in several chapters.