Elsie Venner: A Romance of Destiny

Full text

Elsie Venner: A Romance of Destiny is an 1861 novel by American author and physician Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Later dubbed the first of his "medicated novels", it tells the story of a neurotic young woman whose mother was bitten by a rattlesnake while pregnant, which imbued the child with some characteristics of the reptile.

The Holmes' aim was "to test the doctrine of 'original sin' and human responsibility for the distorted violation coming under that technical denomination". Th...