Author · The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
The Doctor Who Invented Sherlock Holmes
How Arthur Conan Doyle's medical training shaped Sherlock Holmes, and how the author once played detective in real life.
A detective who can glance at a stranger's hands and coat and tell where he has been. Sherlock Holmes is still the first name many people think of when they hear the word detective. Yet the man who created him, Arthur Conan Doyle, began his working life as a doctor.
A medical student in Edinburgh
Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1859, and he studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh. There he met Dr. Joseph Bell, a teacher famous for amazing his students. Before a patient said a word, Bell would notice the way they walked, the calluses on their hands or the color of their skin, and announce their trade or where they lived.
Conan Doyle later said that Holmes's way of observing owed a great deal to this teacher. As a student he also served as a ship's doctor on a whaling voyage into Arctic waters, and after qualifying he opened a medical practice. Patients were slow to come, and he filled the quiet hours by writing.
A detective who grew up in a magazine
Holmes first appeared in A Study in Scarlet in 1887. It drew only modest attention at first. Things changed in 1891, when Holmes short stories began running in a popular London monthly magazine. Each story was complete on its own, yet the same detective and his loyal friend Dr. Watson returned every time, and readers rushed to buy the next issue. Twelve of these stories were gathered in 1892 as The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
Oddly enough, Conan Doyle was prouder of his historical novels than of his detective. He wanted to be known for serious work and sometimes felt that Holmes overshadowed everything else he wrote. Still, his readers' affection kept him returning to Baker Street for many years.
The author as detective
Conan Doyle also stepped into a real case. George Edalji, a young English solicitor whose father was a vicar from India, had been imprisoned for crimes involving the maiming of animals. Conan Doyle studied the evidence, found it weak and argued Edalji's case in the newspapers, helping to win him a pardon. The affair is often named as one of the reasons England created a Court of Criminal Appeal, where mistaken convictions could be reviewed.
A question to think about
Holmes builds conclusions from small details, and Conan Doyle used the same careful reasoning to show that the evidence against George Edalji did not hold up. Many writers have pointed out that prejudice about Edalji's family background helped make him a suspect in the first place. Even today, people around the world are sometimes cleared of crimes decades after they were wrongly convicted.
How can we keep someone's appearance or background from influencing us more than the evidence when we judge them? And what dangers arise when sharp powers of observation are mixed with prejudice?