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What if the thoughts you fear most belong to someone else?
Austin Gilroy trusts the laboratory, not mesmerism. A professor of physiology, he has little patience for claims that one mind can govern another. But his colleague Professor Wilson takes those claims seriously. In Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Parasite, Gilroy’s private diary brings you close to a skeptic whose confidence begins to fail.
Miss Penclosa has a remarkable strength of will, and her influence turns Gilroy’s certainty into dread. He records urges that do not feel like his own. With his fiancée, Agatha Marden, part of the life he fears losing control of, his struggle becomes more than a test of pride or reason.
What you’ll discover
- A doubter’s private diary Follow Gilroy’s own account as the mind he trusts becomes a source of fear.
- Science meets its limits Enter a laboratory-minded man’s struggle with a power he cannot measure or explain.
- A troubling strength of will Meet Miss Penclosa, whose influence makes Gilroy question whether his impulses belong to him.
- More than wounded pride Agatha Marden’s place in Gilroy’s life gives his fear a deeply personal stake.
- The fear beneath choice Face Doyle’s unsettling question about how much of any choice is truly our own.
Who will love it
Readers who like Victorian ghost stories, psychological suspense and tales of science meeting the unknown, and who enjoy a story told in diary entries by a narrator who watches his own mind.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A skeptic meets Miss Penclosa
- A private test breaks the engagement
- Experiments turn into a grip
- One night he beats her, almost
- Her revenge strikes work and honor
- How the diary builds its dread
Who’s who
- Austin GilroyA young professor of physiology who trusts only measurable facts and finds his own will slipping away as he studies mesmerism.
- Helen PenclosaA frail, crippled woman from Trinidad with a strange power over minds, who wants Gilroy's love and answers rejection with revenge.
- Agatha MardenGilroy's gentle fiancee, who trusts him fully and becomes a subject of Penclosa's mesmerism.
- Professor WilsonA psychologist so eager for cases and evidence that he overlooks the human cost of his research.
- Charles SadlerGilroy's neighbor, a cheerful anatomy demonstrator who tries to warn him and has his own bad history with Penclosa.
- Professor Pratt-HaldaneA sturdy, practical colleague who meets Gilroy's strange story with questions about his habits and a prescription.
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- Hardcover
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- Large print paperback
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- Large print hardcover
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The Parasite
by Arthur Conan Doyle · 1894
A skeptical professor lets a mesmerist test him, and soon cannot stop his own feet from carrying him to her door.
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In short
The Parasite is a short novel by Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, who died in 1930. It first appeared in the 1890s.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A skeptic meets Miss Penclosa
The story opens on March 24 in a university town. Austin Gilroy, thirty-four years old and newly a professor of physiology, writes in his diary that spring is stirring in the trees and in his own blood. He is proud of his training. He trusts the microscope, the scalpel and the scale, and he believes the brain makes the mind just as the liver makes bile.
His friend Professor Wilson studies psychology and the unexplained, and he keeps asking Gilroy to join his research. Gilroy refuses politely, because Wilson's subjects seem to him either frauds or hysterics. Still, he accepts an invitation to an evening at Wilson's house, mostly because his fiancee Agatha Marden and her mother will be there. He expects a performer he can see through in a minute.
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What is The Parasite by Arthur Conan Doyle about?
It follows Austin Gilroy, a skeptical professor of physiology, who takes part in mesmerism experiments with Miss Penclosa and finds that she can bend his will, his feelings and even his actions from a distance.
Who is the parasite in The Parasite?
Gilroy calls Miss Helen Penclosa a parasite because she can send her will into another body and steer it, like a hermit crab creeping into a shell. The image comes up in his diary on April 8.
Is The Parasite a true story?
No, it is fiction. Doyle wrote it in the 1890s, when mesmerism, hypnosis and psychical research were much discussed, and drew on that interest to create a diary of a scientist who loses control.
The author
Arthur Conan Doyle
1859–1930 · British detective novelist
Arthur Conan Doyle was a British writer and physician born in Edinburgh in 1859. He practised medicine in England and wrote novels, short stories and histories. His Sherlock Holmes stories began with A Study in Scarlet in 1887. He also wrote The Lost World in 1912. He died in Crowborough, England, in 1930.
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