Sherlock Holmes: Doctor, Lawyer, Indian…: The Remarkable Adventure of the Great Deception (In Two Parts)
James McCaffery
Part I
Franklin Delano Roosevelt ended an otherwise undistinguished article, “Sherlock Holmes was an American!”, with this acute observation: “Such discussion will go to show that interest in the whole field of Sherlockiana is perennial.”
The continuing truth of this observation has been demonstrated by the recent publication of Robert E. Robinson’s “Fifty-Six Plus Fifty-Six Equal One Hundred Twelve,” Volume 43, Number 1, p. 38. The Baker Street Journal: An Irregular Quarterly of Sherlockiana (March 1993) in which he posits Dr. James H. Watson, Boswell to the great Sherlock Holmes, as the real author of the plays attributed to George Bernard Shaw. He almost got it right. Robinson’s earlier supposition in his article that Holmes was the real author of the works of Shaw is clearly correct.
However, this present article demonstrates the obvious fact that the great Sherlock Holmes, the world’s first consulting detective, was a physician/attorney.
It should be obvious from the name chosen by our unknown genius (Holmes was obviously a pseudonym) that he was a physician/attorney since he chose the family name of the greatest father/son-physician/ attorney family of the last century. Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) was one of the greatest physicians of the last century, having coined the word “anaesthesia” in 1846. His son and namesake (1841–1935) had become well known as early as 1873 as the editor of the 12th edition of Kent’s Commentaries while the publication of The Common Law in 1881 made him a giant in Anglo-American law. Thus, the great detective we know as Sherlock Holmes gives us a clue so obvious and convincing of his dual learned professions that this should be sufficient proof. However, there is much more.
His bibliography shows that he had a medical background. Five of the publications of Sherlock Holmes deal, at least tangentially, with medical topics: On Variations in the Human Ear; On the Tracing of Footsteps; The Influence of a Trade Upon the Form of the Hand; On Tattoo Marks; and the first known work by Holmes, the great remarkable monograph On the Distinction Between the Ashes of Various Tobaccos, a by-product of the young physician’s experiments on the deleterious effects on health from smoking.
The reports published by Watson themselves lead to no other conclusion but that Holmes was a physician, despite Watson’s numerous denials. For example, Watson meets Holmes for the first time, in A Study in Scarlet, at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, one of London’s oldest and greatest hospitals, where Holmes conducts his medical experiments undisturbed. And what experiments they would be for a layman:
“Yes, but it may be pushed to excess. When it comes to beating the subjects in the dissecting-rooms with a stick, it is certainly taking a rather bizarre shape.”
“Beating the subjects!”
“Yes, to verify how far bruises may be produced after death. I saw him at it with my own eyes.” (I.6.) Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Stories, 2 Vols. Bantam, 1986 (hereinafter cited by Volume and page, supra, I.6.). It is inconceivable that any layman, no matter how distinguished, would have been allowed such liberties. Only if Holmes were a distinguished physician would this make sense.
Moreover, on the next page Holmes himself tells us of the forensic importance of his research on bloodstains. “Why, man, it is the most practical medico-legal discovery for years” (I,7) Note the use of the term “medico-legal”: another obvious clue left for us. Interestingly, this fascination with bloodstains has resurfaced in a contemporary giant on the British legal scene, Horace Rumpole, “Rumpole of the Bailey,” as related by his own Watson, John Mortimer. See John Mortimer, The First Rumpole Omnibus, Penguin, 1983, pages 32–33.
“I wish you’d been there to hear me cross-examine about the bloodstains in the ‘Penge Bungalow Murder’”…
“I began to discuss with Nick the horrifying adventure of The Speckled Band.”
“And remember we were Holmes and Watson? When we went for walks in Hyde Park.”
But back to the work which introduced Holmes to the public, A Study in Scarlet. The medical examination of the murder victim is done, not by Watson, a physician, but by Holmes, with the police looking on. And it is Holmes who authorizes the body to be taken to the mortuary! (I, 22–23). Obviously Holmes is a physician, and a prominent one to boot, for all involved to accede to his action in this matter.
There are numerous other such examples throughout the adventures. For example, when a doctor, who is a leading authority on catalepsy, is fooled in an incidence concerning this disease, Holmes is not. (I, 589) (The Resident Patient):
“And the catalepsy?”
“A fraudulent imitation, Watson, though I should hardly dare to hint as much to our specialist. It is a very easy complaint to imitate. I have done it myself.”
In fact, in another adventure, when Holmes had convinced everybody, including Watson, that he, Holmes, was dying, he stated: “Malingering is a subject upon which I have sometimes thought of writing a monograph.” (II, 399). (The Adventure of the Dying Detective). In this same adventure Holmes deceives an expert on Asiatic diseases with his own vast medical knowledge, far surpassing the medical knowledge of Watson, a physician who has served in Asia in the British Army:
“What do you know, pray, of Tapanuli fever? What do you know of the Black Formosa corruption?”
“I have never heard of either….”
“I have learned so much during some recent researches…” (II, 388)
Also, Holmes was accustomed to quiz Watson on medical matters. (II, 640).
“What do you make of it, Watson?”
“It was burned to a black cinder, but there could be no question as to its anatomical significance.
“It’s the upper condyle of a human femur,” said I.
“Exactly!”
Also, in another case, we see the intimate knowledge of the forensic pathologist at work as Holmes examines two severed ears. (II, 327–328). (The Adventure of the Cardboard Box):
“Bodies in the dissecting rooms are injected with preservative fluid. These ears bear no signs of this. They are fresh, too. They have been cut off with a blunt instrument which would hardly happen if a student had done it. Again, carbolic or rectified spirits would be the preservatives which would suggest themselves to the medical mind. One of these ears is a woman’s…. The other a man’s….”
Then the true genius of Holmes shows through: “These two people are presumably dead, or we should have heard their story before now.”
However, perhaps the most gratifying case of all for Holmes the physician, and one that he narrates himself (perhaps not wanting Watson to muddy the waters) concerns a young man, wrongly diagnosed by a country doctor (albeit with great justification) as having leprosy. Holmes, without ever examining the patient, realizes that the diagnosis is in error and arranges to have the correct diagnosis (which he has already made) given by a specialist, who then comments to Holmes: (II, 503) (The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier):
“Yes, Mr. Holmes, the coincidence is a remarkable one. But is it a coincidence? Are there not subtle forces at work of which we know little?”
We could go on with numerous such proofs, such as the great knowledge of poisons displayed by Holmes in “The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire,” (II, 547) but enough. Holmes was obviously a physician; but a member of the legal profession?
For our proof, we look to the case of the barking dog!
HERE ENDS PART I OF THE REMARKABLE ADVENTURE OF THE GREAT DECEPTION. Comments from readers are welcome in this hiatus between part one and part two of this study.
Part II.
We ended part I of our study, which proved beyond doubt that Sherlock Holmes, the world’s first consulting detective, was a physician. As to being a lawyer, we ended by giving the clue of the case of the barking dog.
There is of course no case of the barking dog! However, in Silver Blaze (I, 472) we read:
“Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”
“To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time”
“The dog did nothing in the night-time.”
“That was the curious incident,” remarked Sherlock Holmes.
It is not a “curious incident” that the greatest detective of all time supposedly had no formal training in the law. Michael Harrison, in In the Footsteps of Sherlock Holmes, Drake, 1972, states that “Holmes apparently did not study law…. Nowhere in the record of his campaign against crime and criminals is there any evidence that he knew or cared about the legal arguments which would take a man to the gallows or save him from them.”
This is simply not true. We are told so in black and white. (II, 509) (The Adventure of Mazarin Stone):
“Really, sir, you compliment me. Old Baron Dowson said the night before he was hanged that in my case what the law had gained the stage had lost.” Notice the words “the law,” not just “law.” Obviously, Holmes was a part of the legal profession. No doubt that, if Watson had reported the adventure that led to the capture and execution of the fiendish Baron Dowson, we would have seen the finest legal mind in Victorian England at its best. And Holmes is obviously referring to his previous life when he reminisces: (II, 138).
“The barrister who has his case at his fingers’ ends and is able to argue with an expert upon his own subject finds that a week or two of courts will drive it all out of his head once more. So each of my cases displaces the last….”
This must have been a common idea expressed by Holmes since Watson later repeats it as his own. (II, 478) (The Adventure of the Illustrious Client).
Moreover, Holmes was one of the greatest legal historians of his day (criminal law being perhaps an avocation) as shown in an adventure that took place at one of the great (unnamed) university towns: (I, 825–826) (The Adventure of the Three Students).
“We were residing at the time in furnished lodgings close to a library where Sherlock Holmes was pursuing some laborious researches in early English Chartres- researches which led to results so striking that they may be the subject of one of my future narratives….”
And try as he might to hide his legal training, Holmes sometimes left his guard down as he does here giving Watson legal advice: (II, 150) (The Valley of Fear):
“But in calling Moriarty a criminal you are uttering libel in the eyes of the law…. For those very words that you have uttered, he could hale you to a court and emerge with your year’s pension as a solatium….”
And Holmes often gives legal advice to keep his friends and clients from trouble: (II, 497) (The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier):
“You must be aware, Mr. Dodd, that Colonel Emsworth is within his rights and that we have no legal status within his house.”
And when building a case, how the legal aspects would play in court was always on his mind: (II, 117) (The Hound of the Baskervilles).
“We should be laughed out of court if we came with such a story and such evidence.”
Moreover, when Holmes needed to get a copy of a will that had been filed, he did it himself without anybody’s help. (I, 357) (The Adventure of the Speckled Band). Holmes never seems to need legal advice. In fact, in an unreported case, we learn that he was considered an international authority on wills: (I, 109) (The Sign of Four). “I was consulted last week by Francois le Villard… in the French detective service…. concerned with a will….
Thus, Holmes may have also been a master of Civil Law, as well as Common Law.
But most importantly of all, Holmes was able to avoid the legal consequences of numerous arguably illegal acts, including burglary, as Watson notes: (II, 485) (The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier).
“My friend has not yet stood in the dock.”
Thus, the fact that the man who called Sherlock Holmes was England’s greatest medical/legal mind is clear! But why the subterfuge? The answer could only be provided now in the latter half of the Twentieth Century. It must be remembered that Moriarty, “the Napoleon of crime,” was the author of that great work of mathematics, suppressed by the British Government up to the present, The Dynamics of an Asteroid. (II, 150). Only he could have been the evil force behind the “giant rat of Sumatra,” which Holmes tells us is “a story for which the world is not yet prepared.” (II, 534) (The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire).
For you see…. But is the world prepared now? Probably not! If any reader (for we must surely have another doctor/attorney who can approach the genius of Holmes) wishes to provide the answer….
As for the Indian, look for a mongoose tale.
In any event, let us name this great doctor/lawyer.