Anyone who reads this book will have a great time! If the author didn't confess in the subtitle that it's an autobiography, we would read it as if it were a novel, so fabulous and even unbelievable some of the events he recreates seem to us. Axel Munthe –a Swede who lived between 1857 and 1949– worked for many years as a "fashionable doctor" in Paris and Rome. He treated countless women –especially women, and of high standing– who were hysterical –mainly hysterical–. In his therapeutic practice, he resorted to medical (or pseudo-medical) uses that were beginning to become popular at that time, such as hypnosis. "There is no medicine more potent than hope," he writes in one of the central chapters, and indeed he put it into fruitful practice.