The wild, cruel beast is not behind the bars of the cage. He is in front of it.

At this point he returned to Sweden for a number of years and wrote The Story of San Michele (publiAxel Munthed in 1929) which was well received having been translated into at least forty-five languages and said to be one of the best-selling books of the 20th century. Munthe had a philanthropic nature often treating the poor without charge at his medical practices and risking his life on several occasions to help in times of war disaster or plague when he could have remained at a safe distance. Other than his thesis his first publications covered a number of travel discourses which appeared in the Stockholms Dagblad newspaper and which described his experiences of relief work during the cholera epidemic in Naples.

Axel Munthe had a multi-national character and spoke several languages (Swedish English French Italian fluently and German at least passably) growing up in Sweden attending medical school and opening his first practice in France. He was a tireless advocate of animal rights purchasing land to create a bird sanctuary near his home in Italy advocating bans on painful traps and keeping pets as diverse as an owl and a baboon and many different kinds of dogs. Munthe had a philanthropic nature often treating the poor without charge at his medical practices and risking his life on several occasions to help in times of war disaster or plague when he could have remained at a safe distance.