The memoirs of Axel Munthe, a Swedish doctor who was born in 1857. He is a master-storyteller: his tales of the high life and the low life are riveting. He was court physician to the royal family, also treated the Tzar of Russia and later became a fashionable doctor in Paris in the late 19th century, where he treated his society patients while also working among the impecunious artists and in the slums.
Professionally his interests ranged from psychiatry to gynaecology and it is fascinating to see the medical procedures of the time through his eyes, and to meet the people he knew, like De Maupassant, Charcot and Pasteur.
He traveled extensively, worked in Naples during the great cholera epidemic, was a "corpse-conductor" in Germany and spent time with the nomads in Lapland. He loved Capri, and spent summers on the island, building the Villa of San Michele.
The Story of San Michele was first published in 1929, but it is never out of print and you are sure to find a copy in your library.