THE SCIENCE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES

“How are you?” he said cordially, gripping my hand with a strength for which I should hardly have given him credit. “You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive.”
“How on earth did you know that?” I asked in astonishment.


That was Sherlock Holmes, the legendary consulting detective of all time, created by the Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. This conversation arises when Holme’s chronicler and life-long friend Dr. Watson meets him for the first time, more emphatically, in a chemical laboratory. Watson is a medical man well talented and well read but until he had this startling acquaintance with Holmes he didn’t believe in this ‘inductive method reasoning’ employed by the master detective. At first he was reluctant to accept that ‘the science of deduction’ can carry a person from present to the past, from present effect to an absent cause. For the bewildered Watson, Holmes explains that “From a drop of water… a logician could infer the possibility of an Atlantic or a Niagra without having seen or heard of one or the other.” Sherlock Holmes first makes his appearance in ‘A Study in Scarlet’ published in 1881, modeled against Inspector Duplin of Edgar Allan Poe, who is only an ‘illusion’ of the scientific method as per Doyle. Largely making Duplin an icon of the Scotland Yard, Doyle believed that he had succeeded where Poe had failed. That’s why he made Watson to remark that “Holmes has brought criminal investigation as near an exact science as it will ever brought into the world.”


The Veil of History
It is true that the icon of Holmes was moulded out from certain relics of forensics, but contrary to the common view, rather than being responsible for the invention of the forensic science, the creation of Holmes was influenced by the early development of it. In the Victorian world, forensic science was largely a function of the medical profession, frequently referred to as ‘Medical Jurisprudence.’ At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the great Italian physician Giovanni Battista Morgagni began to match the changes in the cadaver to the clinical symptoms of the disease reported before death. In Lyon, Dr. Alexandre Lacassagne had made notes on rigor mortis - the way in which the muscles stiffen after death and also the livor mortis - the discolouration of body due to death. He also observed that algor mortis - the cooling of the body after death can also be a tool in estimating the time of death. The post-mortem technique was perfected by Karl Rokitansky in Vienna triggering a new wave of medical evidences across the continent.
However, across the English Channel, things remained very different from the rest of the continent. A mixture of religious beliefs and superstitions hindered the dissection practice of human body for long. The public mind began to change only in the mid-nineteenth century when Alfred Swaine Taylor published a book on human anatomy, pathology and toxicology, the first of its kind in English language. Taylor was a pathologist trained in Paris who came to teach ‘legal medicine’ in London. It was his book which appeared in the title “A Manual of Medical Jurisprudence” that became an inspiration for Conan Doyle in creating the plot of many of Sherlockian stories. A part of it reads like this: “A medical man, when he sees a dead body, should notice everything. He should observe everything which could throw a light on the production of wounds or other injuries found on it…” The same words are echoed in Dr. Watson’s description of Holmes examining a body in “A Study in Scarlet”; “His nimble fingers were flying here, there, and everywhere, feeling, pressing, unbuttoning, examining…” We could say Sherlock Holmes is fictional, but what we learn from his is really ‘real’.


The Method of Holmes
Conan Doyle himself had said that the inspiration for Sherlock Holmes was his teacher Joseph Bell, while he was studying medicine in Edinburgh. In an interview made towards the end of his life, Doyle explains that “I thought I would try writing a story where the hero would treat crime as Dr. Bell treated disease.” Dr. Bell’s demonstrations of the power of observation and deduction were famous among the students which he used to establish the non-medical aspects of the patients. He could reconstruct the past history and profession of his patients from their dress, accent, habit and symptoms. Once, Dr. Bell is reported to diagnose a patient as a recently discharged non-commissioned officer from a Highland regiment stationed in Barbados. Upon asking, he explained to his students, “You see, gentlemen, the man was respectful, but he did not remove his hat, because they don’t do it in the army and if he would have been long discharged, he would have learned those civilian ways! The complaint was Elephantiasis, which is West Indian, Barbados and not British.” The same reasoning is demonstrated by Holmes while he concludes that Watson was from Afghanistan when they first meet in “A Study in Scarlet.”
Holmes uses ‘eliminative method of induction’ for reaching a conclusion which is often repeated as he claims in “The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet” that “when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” The eliminative method is also evident in “The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier” where Holmes uses it to solve the mystery of the incarceration of Godfrey Emsworth by his family. More scientifically Holmesian method has an allusion to the methodology of the fossil scientists also. They often make retrospective prophesies that may enable them for the reconstruction of entire animals, even from a tooth or a fragment of bone. More recently, the comparative anatomist Richard Owen had been celebrated for reconstructing an extinct bird from a six-inch long piece of bone. Similar approach is used by Holmes who treats Dr. Mortimer’s walking stick in “The Hound of Baskervilles” as a kind of fossil remain to reconstruct the ‘absent’ man! Homles has clearly stated in “The Five Orange Pips”: “...the observer who has thoroughly understood one link in a series of incidents should be able to accurately state all the other ones, both before and after.”


The Lab of the Detective
Holmes was experimenting on blood-stains when Dr. Watson first met him and there was an amazing event witnessed by him. “I’ve found it! I’ve found it”, he shouted to my companion, running towards us with a test-tube in his hand. “I have found a reagent which in precipitated by hemoglobin, and by nothing else... It is the most practical medico-legal discovery for years... The day Guaiacum test was very clumsy and uncertain...” Truly there was enough reason for Holme’s excitement. Determining whether a stain was blood was an old and difficult problem in criminal investigation. Ever since the early nineteenth century, all sorts of attempts had been made to establish a reliable test. The Guaiacum test, which Holmes criticizes is based on the fact that the resin of the West Indian Guaiacum Tree turns the deep blue colour of the contents when oxidised. This change in colour will result as well if a mixture of blood and hydrogen peroxide is added to the Guaiacum. The drawback of this test lies in the fact that a number of substances besides blood can give positive results including bile, saliva and red wine. There was also a microscopic test in use, described by Charles Meymott Tidy in 1882, but that too was not conclusive.
Modern chemists report that the method Holmes describes would need an acid to increase the oxidation state, as well as a material to be oxidised. By examining the possibilities for the ‘few white crystals’ and the ‘drop of transparent fluid’ that Holmes uses, the chemists suggest that ‘the Holmesian test’ would probably have had a sensitivity similar to Guaiacum test, but not better than it. It is also being suggested that if Doyle had been a little more careful, he could have found the spectroscopic method for blood identification developed in 1989, prior to the publication of the ‘A Study in Scarlet.’ It was by Robert Wilhelm von Bunsen, the very man credited with the invention of the ‘Bunsen Burner’ who attached a spectroscope to the microscope, developing the most accurate method for detecting hemoglobin. The spectral analysis was highly sensitive and could detect blood in stains that were years old. However, differentiating human and animal blood remained a problem. A solution to this problem did not arise until the ‘Anti-serum method’ was developed by Paul Ublenhuth, in Germany. And Holme’s words finally touched their soul: “Had this test been invented, there are hundreds of men now walking the earth would long ago have paid the penalty for their crimes.”


Evidence in Traces
Holmes had been bending over a low-power microscope for long time. Now he straightened himself up and looked around at me in triumph. “It is glue, Watson” said he. “Unquestionably it is glue. Have a look at these scattered objects in the field!” This is an excerpt from “The Adventure of Shoscombe old Place” when Dr. Watson was invited to take part in a microscopic examination conducted by Holmes. In “The Sign of Four”, he is telling Watson: “Here too is a curious little work upon the influence of a trade upon the forms of the hand, with lithotypes of the hands of slaters, sailors, cork-cutters, compositors, weavers and diamond-polishers.” Holmes was absolutely to the point. During the very period in which Doyle was framing the Holmes stories, ‘trace evidence’ was becoming a vital part of the criminalistics. Every crevice and fissure in the human body was considered a possible hiding place for ‘trace evidence’. In 1893, three years after the publication of “The Sign of Four”, a book was published stressing the importance of the ‘trace evidence’ and its micro-chemical analysis. Thus Holme’s fanciful documentations of tobacco ashes, soil types, hair samples and fibre-kinds were getting into real life. Strangely enough, in 1916, a research paper appeared in the journal Police Microscopy, stating the importance of vacuum cleaner, as a perfect device for collecting dust particles!
In “The Adventure of the Norwood Builder”, Holmes says to Inspector Lestrade, “I pay a good deal of attention to matters of detail, as you may have observed. Indeed, he was a man who made the “mute witnesses” to speak. There was one real incident where the innovative method of enquiry was adopted. In October 1904, a strangled body of a woman was found lying in a bean field in Germany. Searching the area, the Police found only a heavily soiled hand kerchief as a probable evidence. The police sought the help of Dr. Georg Popp, a chemist who owned a laboratory in Frankfurt. Dr. Popp observed the hand kerchief through the microscope and found tiny crystals of sand, coal, snuff and a mineral known as hornblende. The police was suspicious of a man called Karl Laubach who worked at varied places. He was also in habit of using snuff. also. Laubach’s fingernail - scraps were examined under microscope and it revealed the same items such as sand, coal and hornblende. Traces of vegetation that clung to the garment also matched to those from the crime scene. Bits of scarf-fibres also were traced from his nail-scraps which was used for strangulation. Thus everything ended well as envisaged by Holmes who is seen advising in “The Adventure of the Creeping Man: “Always look at the hands first, Watson. Then cuffs, trouser-knees and boots.”


Evidences in Letters
Holmes’s ability to trace out evidence provided by handwriting is well placed. Forgery with its old and dishonorable history is evaluated in wonderful way by Holmes in many of his stories. His penetrating eye of detail can be seen in “The Man with the Twisted Lip” When he says: “This man has written the name, and there has then been a pause before be wrote the address, which can only mean that he was not Familiar with it. It is, of course, a trifle, but there is nothing so important as trifles”. Holmes also had a clever look on the use of blotting paper upon writing letters which leaves a change in the shade of letters, but towards the end of the nineteenth century there was a challenge for him, with the popular use of typewriters. The forgers were happy to use it as a new device to serve their disguise. However, Holmes was also there to state his part. In 1891, when “A case of Identity” was published, Doyle spoke through Holmes: “It is a curious thing..... that a type writer has really quite as much individuality as a man’s hand writing. Unless they are quite new, no two of them write exactly alike. Some letters get more worn than others, and some wear only on one side”.
Yes! That was an exceedingly clever observation and until “A Case of Identity” was published nobody had ever thought of such a possibility! The imagination of Doyle triggered the minds of document examiners in police laboratories and they found that typewriters, even when spanking new, showed enough individual variations to firmly establish identity. However, as Astrology, sometimes these practices can also lead to the realm of pseudoscience. We could say that Sherlock Holmes was sometimes a bit overly enthusiastic. Contrary to the popular belief, even a highly trained document examiner cannot reliably tell gender, age or psychological traits from handwriting. An interesting incident occurred when some doodles were found on the desk of the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, attending the Davos World Economic Forum. Reuters reported that he was not concentrating and was “not a natural leader.” It was a great shame for Blair and so graphologists were invited, to analyse the scribbling. And to the great surprise those were that of Bill Gates who shared the table with him at the summit! As Holmes has aptly put it “The press, Watson, is a most valuable institution, if you only know how to use it.”


A Biological Weapon
It seems possible that Doyle was personifying himself through Dr. Watson who is stated to have graduated with an MD form the University of London, in 1878. Doyle took his graduation from Edinburgh University in 1881 and incidently it was the golden age of microbiology, with landmark discoveries by Robert Koch, Paul Ehrlich and Louis Pasteur amongst others. It is not surprising that the Holmes stories contain numerous references to infectious diseases, the extreme of it being a case of bioweapon. In ‘The Adventure of the Dying Defective’ a Fatal disease called “The Tapanuli Fever” is used as a homicide weapon by a criminal called Culverton Smith. Smith cultured the bacteria on gelatin, brought them to London and infected his nephew, who died within four days. He also attempted to infect Holmes, but Holmes anticipatingly avoids the trap. According to Holmes, Smith was a resident of Sumatra where there was an outbreak of this disease among his plantation workers. He denotes it to be “highly contagious by touch”. Several candidates have been proposed for this ‘deadly Asiatic infection’ such as Scrub Typhus, Typhoid, Anthrax and Septicaemic Plague as attractive possibilities, but the most accurate diagnostic finding is Melioidosis which is also known as Whitmore’s disease.6
It can be assumed that Doyle during his medical career and travel as a ship’s doctor to the West coast Africa might have experienced many diseases of uncertain etiology. Tapanuli is referred to have fever, anorexia, sweating and sever fatigue as its marking symptoms to which Melioidosis deplorably fits with the clinical standards. It was first reported from Burma by Whitmore and Krishnaswami in 1912. In 1987, Meliodosis was responsible for 20% of all cases of epidemics in Thailand, which is geographically similar to Sumatra, Indonesia. It is caused by Berkholderia pseudomallei, which commonly affects rice paddy farmers during the monsoon months of July to September. Even with the availability of potent antibiotics of the eighties, mortality from Melioidosis was very high, ranging up to 68%. As a strange coincidence, Berkholderia pseudomallei is culturable in gelatin agar and the septic shock can cause fatigue, cold sweats and anorexia. Death can occur within 48 hours which has earned it the name the “Vietnamese Time Bomb”. Recently, the US centers for Disease Control have identified it as a potential agent for bioterrorism, following the “Anthrax letters” to America. Culverton Smith’s postal delivery also has new become a fearful fancy.


His Last Bow
Holmes has also been credited for inventing methods of studying poisons, stains, foot prints, traces of wheels, the shape and position of wounds, but how much appealing this claim might be to the fans of Sherlock Holmes, it seems that there is little evidence to support it. Although the science of forensics was still relatively young by the time the Holmes stories were written, many of the procedures and methods that are often attributed, to the imagination of Conan Doyle had already been in practice. Ironically, it was the famous criminal, turned detective Eugene Francois Vidocq who first made plaster casts of foot prints on a crime scene. He was also responsible for studying the shape assumed by blood stains as they fall on a surface. The shape and position of wounds were detailed in Lacassagne’s Precis de medicine’ that appeared, in 1878. A system of fingerprint identification was established in Scotland Yard from 1901, ie, five years before Holmes used a forged thumbprint in the plot of “The Norwood Builder”. Thus, rather than inventing anything novel, Doyle through Holmes did more than any other person to portray science as a valuable tool in criminal detection.5 He didn’t claim anything, as he says while acknowledging an error in “The Yellow Face:” “Watson, if it should ever strike you that I am getting a little over-confident in my powers..... kindly whisper ‘Nor bury’ in my ear, and I shall be indefinitely obliged to you.”


ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle was born on 22nd May 1859 in Edinburgh, Scotland. At the age of nine, he was sent to the Roman Catholic Jesuit preparatory school at Stonyhurst. He then went to Stonyhurst College and by the time he had rejected Christianity to become an agnostic. From 1876 to 1881, he studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh. While studying he also began writing short stories, the first being published, before he was 20. Following his term at University, he served as a ship’s doctor on a voyage to the West African coast. He completed his doctorate in 1885. His medical practice was not very successful and so while waiting for patients, he began writing stories. His first significant work was ‘A study in Scarlet,” a novel, that he wrote at the age of 27. It appeared in Beeton’s Christmas Annual, in 1887, featuring the first appearance of Sherlock Holmes. Future short stories featuring Sherlock Holmes were published in the Strand Magazine. Holmes, ultimately appeared in a total of 56 short stories and four novels by him. Conan Doyle was friend for a time with the American magician Harry Houdini. The autobiographical work of Doyle also reveals his fidelity to magic which is entitled “Through the Magic Door”. Doyle married twice and he maintained a platonic lover towards his second wife. When he died of heart attack, at the age of 71 his last words were directed towards his wife:” You are wonderful”.


THE CASE OF THOMAS SMETHURST
Unlike many of the cases dealt with by Sherlock Holmes, this is not fiction. The Smethurst Case was particularly important because during its trial a leading toxicologist was forced to admit that his earlier conclusions were wrong. But the confession was not enough as it has lead to a death sentence for the alleged murderer. An independent body of specialists later recommended the release of the condemned, creating a long standing suspicion by the British public towards forensic techniques. The case was that Dr. Thomas Smethurst, a hydro therapist, killed a wealthy woman, whom he befriended, through Arsenic poisoning. The testing was done by a renowned toxicologist Alfred Swaine Taylor, who adopted the recently developed test for Arsenic by Hugo Reinsch of Germany. The test was positive, but the autopsy revealed, no trace of Arsenic. Then Taylor had to confess that the apparatus he used for testing was already contaminated with Arsenic. But, the Judge was reluctant to admit it and a death sentence was decreeded creating much public outcry. The trial catched everyday media attention and the verdit was finally overturned through an emotional plea for mercy to queen Voictoria. Dr. Smethurst received only an year of imprisonment and upon release he sued for the wealthy woman’s property, won the case, pocketed the money and disappeared from public view. It was during these times (1859) Connan Doyle was born and brought up. Whether Dr. Smethurst was too wise in poisoning to trick the police? Anyway, Doyle had to give the Victorian public a scientific detective they could trust, and he won in that.


AMAZING FACTS ON SHERLOCK HOLMES
 Sherlock Holmes was inducted as an honorary fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry on 16th October 2002. Holmes is the only fictional character honored in such way.
 Sherlock Holmes holds the permanent address of “221 B, Baker Street, London.” Though fictional, the address is now real, used by the Holmes Museum.
 Holmes Museum in London has a re-created sitting room and as variety of Holmes memorabilia. Another Holmes Museum there in is Switzerland also.
 According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Sherlock Holmes is the most portrayed fictional character in film, 75 actors playing him in 211 movies.
 The latest movie on Sherlock Holmes was released in Hollywood under the same title in late 2009. It will be in Indian theaters in the coming months.


DO YOU KNOW!
Included within Holmes stories, there are references to 68 diseases, 32 medical terms, 38 doctors, 22 drugs, 12 medical specialties, 3 medical journals and 2 medical schools.7


Reference
1. Synder, L J (2004) Sherlock Holmes: Scientific Detective. Endeaver 28, 104-108.
2. Rupke, NA (1994) Richard Owen, Victorian Naturalist, Yale University Press pp. 346-344.
3. Liebow, E (1982) Dr Joe Bell, Model of Sherlock Holmes. Bowling Green University Popular Press.
4. Gerber, SM (1983) Chemistry and Crime: From Sherlock Holmes to Today’s Courtroom. Americal Chemical Society, pp 31-35.
5. Smyth, F (1980) Cause of Death: The Story of Forensic Science, Van Nostrand Reinbold, p 146 and p 184.
6. Vora, Sethu K.(2002) Sherlock Holmes and a Biological Weapon. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 95, 101-103.
7. Reed, James (2001) A Medical Perspective on the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Medical Humanities, 27, 76-81.