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“How are you?” he said cordially,gripping my hand with a strength forwhich I should hardly have given himcredit. “You have been in Afghanistan,I perceive.”

“How on earth did you know that?” I askedin astonishment.

THAT was Sherlock Holmes,the legendary consultingdetective of all time, createdby the Scottish author and

physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.This conversation happens whenHolmes’s chronicler and life-longfriend Dr. Watson meets him for thefirst time, more emphatically, in achemical laboratory. Watson is amedical man well talented and wellread but until he had this startlingacquaintance with Holmes he didn’tbelieve in the ‘inductive method ofreasoning’ employed by the masterdetective.

At first he was reluctant to acceptthat ‘the science of deduction’ can carrya person from the present to the past,from the present effect to an absentcause. For the bewildered Watson,Holmes explains: “From a drop ofwater… a logician could infer thepossibility of an Atlantic or a Niagarawithout having seen or heard of one orthe other.”

Sherlock Holmes first makes hisappearance in A Study in Scarletpublished in 1881, modeled againstInspector Duplin of Edgar Allan Poe,who is only an ‘illusion’ of thescientific method as per Doyle.Largely making Duplin an icon of theScotland Yard, Doyle believed that hehad succeeded where Poe had failed.That’s why he made Watson remark:“Holmes has brought criminalinvestigation as near an exact scienceas it will ever brought into theworld.”

N. S. ARUN KUMAR

The English movieSherlock Holmes,dealing with theexploits of thelegendary fictionaldetective, releasedrecently in India. It isperhaps the right timeto take a close look atthe science behindsome of Holmes’sforensic exploits.

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The Veil of HistoryIt is true that the iconic personality ofHolmes was moulded from certainrelics of forensics, but contrary to thecommon view, rather than beingresponsible for the invention offorensic science, the creation of Holmeswas influenced by the earlydevelopment of it. In the Victorianworld, forensic science was largely afunction of the medical profession,frequently referred to as ‘MedicalJurisprudence.’

At the beginning of the eighteenthcentury, the great Italian physicianGiovanni Battista Morgagni began tomatch the changes in the cadaver to theclinical symptoms of the disease

reported before death. In Lyon, Dr.Alexandre Lacassagne had made noteson rigor mortis – the way in which themuscles stiffen after death and alsolivor mortis – the discolouration of bodydue to death. He also observed that algormortis – the cooling of the body afterdeath – can also be a tool in estimatingthe time of death. The post-mortemtechnique was perfected by KarlRokitansky in Vienna triggering a newwave of medical evidences across thecontinent.

Although the science offorensics was stillrelatively young by thetime the Holmes storieswere written, many of theprocedures and methodsthat are often attributed tothe imagination of ConanDoyle had already been inpractice.

Sherlock Holmes, the movie that released recently;(left) a scene from the movie

However, across the EnglishChannel, things remained verydifferent from the rest of the continent.A mixture of religious beliefs andsuperstitions hindered the dissectionpractice of human body for long. Thepublic mind began to change only inthe mid-nineteenth century whenAlfred Swaine Taylor published a bookon human anatomy, pathology andtoxicology, the first of its kind inEnglish language. Taylor was a patho-logist trained in Paris who came to

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teach ‘legal medicine’ in London. It washis book A Manual of MedicalJurisprudence that became aninspiration for Conan Doyle in creatingthe plot of many of Sherlockian stories.

A part of it reads like this: “Amedical man, when he sees a deadbody, should notice everything. Heshould observe everything whichcould throw light on the production ofwounds or other injuries found on it…”The same words are echoed in Dr.Watson’s description of Holmesexamining 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 isfictional, but what we learn from hisexploits is really ‘real’.

The Method of HolmesConan Doyle himself had said that theinspiration for Sherlock Holmes washis teacher Joseph Bell, while he wasstudying medicine in Edinburgh. In aninterview made towards the end of hislife, Doyle explains: “I thought I wouldtry writing a story where the herowould treat crime as Dr. Bell treateddisease.” Dr. Bell’s demonstrations ofthe power of observation anddeduction, which he used to establishthe non-medical aspects of the patients,were famous among the students. Hecould reconstruct the past history andprofession of his patients from theirdress, accent, habit and symptoms.

Once, Dr. Bell is reported to havediagnosed a patient as a recentlydischarged non-commissioned officerfrom a Highland regiment stationedin Barbados. Upon asking, he explainedto his students, “You see, gentlemen,the man was respectful, but he did notremove his hat, because they don’t doit in the army and if he would havebeen long discharged, he would havelearned those civilian ways! Thecomplaint was Elephantiasis, which isWest Indian, Barbados and not British.”

The same reasoning isdemonstrated by Holmeswhen he concludes thatWatson was fromAfghanistan when theyfirst meet in A Study inScarlet.

Holmes uses‘eliminative method ofinduction’ for reaching aconclusion which is oftenrepeated as he claims in TheAdventure of the BerylCoronet: “When you haveexcluded the impossible,whatever remains, howeverimprobable, must be thetruth.”

The eliminative method is alsoevident in The Adventure of the BlanchedSoldier where Holmes uses it to solvethe mystery of the incarceration ofGodfrey Emsworth by his family.More scientifically Holmesian method

The SherlockHolmes Museum

at 221b BakerStreet, London

has an allusion to the methodology ofthe fossil scientists also. They oftenmake retrospective prophecies thatmay enable them to reconstruct entireanimals, even from a tooth or afragment of bone.

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More recently, the comparativeanatomist Richard Owen had beencelebrated for reconstructing an extinctbird from a six-inch long piece of bone.Similar approach is used by Holmeswho treats Dr. Mortimer’s walkingstick in The Hound of Baskervilles as akind of fossil remain to reconstruct the‘absent’ man! Homles has clearly statedin The Five Orange Pips: “...the observerwho has thoroughly understood onelink in a series of incidents should beable to accurately state all the otherones, both before and after.”

Lab of the DetectiveHolmes was experimenting on bloodstains when Dr. Watson first met himand there was an amazing eventwitnessed by him. He says: “’I’ve foundit! I’ve found it’, he shouted to mycompanion, running towards us with atest-tube in his hand. ‘I have found areagent which is precipitated by

hemoglobin, and by nothing else... Itis the most practical medico-legaldiscovery for years... The Guaiacumtest was very clumsy and uncertain...’”

Truly there was enough reason forHolmes’s excitement. Determiningwhether a stain was blood was an oldand difficult problem in criminalinvestigation. Ever since the earlynineteenth century, all sorts ofattempts had been made to establish areliable test. The Guaiacum test, whichHolmes criticizes, is based on the factthat the resin of the West IndianGuaiacum Tree turns the deep bluecolour of the contents when oxidised.This change in colour will result as wellif a mixture of blood and hydrogenperoxide is added to the Guaiacum. Thedrawback of this test lies in the fact thata number of substances besides bloodcan give positive results including bile,saliva and red wine. There was also amicroscopic test in use, described byCharles Meymott Tidy in 1882, but thattoo was not conclusive.

Modern chemists report that themethod Holmes describes would needan acid to increase the oxidation state,as well as a material to be oxidised. Byexamining the possibilities for the ‘fewwhite crystals’ and the ‘drop of transparentfluid’ that Holmes uses, the chemistssuggest that ‘the Holmesian test’ wouldprobably have had a sensitivity similarto Guaiacum test, but not better than it.

It is also being suggested that ifDoyle had been a little more careful,he could have found thespectroscopic method for bloodidentification developed in 1989,prior to the publication of the AStudy in Scarlet . I t was RobertWilhelm von Bunsen, the very mancredited with the invention of the‘Bunsen Burner’, who attached aspectroscope to the microscope,developing the most accuratemethod for detecting hemoglobin.The spectral analysis was highlysensitive and could detect blood instains that were years old.

However, differentiating humanand animal blood remained aproblem. A solution to this problemdid not arise until the ‘Anti-serummethod’ was developed by PaulUblenhuth, in Germany. And Holmes’swords finally touched their soul: “Hadthis test been invented, there arehundreds of men now walking theearth would long ago have paid thepenalty for their crimes.”

Evidence in TracesHolmes had been bending over a low-powermicroscope for long time. Now hestraightened himself up and looked aroundat me in triumph. “It is glue, Watson,”said he. “Unquestionably it is glue. Havea look at these scattered objects in thefield!”

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Inside the Museum

Modernchemistsreport that themethodHolmesdescribeswould needan acid toincrease theoxidationstate, as wellas a materialto beoxidised.

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This is an excerpt from TheAdventure of Shoscombe Old Place whenDr. Watson was invited to take part ina microscopic examination conductedby Holmes.

In The Sign of Four, he is tellingWatson: “Here too is a curious littlework upon the influence of a tradeupon the forms of the hand, withlithotypes 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 Doylewas framing the Holmes stories, ‘traceevidence’ was becoming a vital part ofcriminalistics. Every crevice and fissurein the human body was considered apossible hiding place for ‘traceevidence’.

In 1893, three years after thepublication of The Sign of Four, a bookwas published stressing theimportance of the ‘trace evidence’ andits micro-chemical analysis. Thus,Holmes’s fanciful documentations oftobacco ashes, soil types, hair samplesand fibre-kinds were getting into reallife. Strangely enough, in 1916, aresearch paper appeared in the journalPolice Microscopy, stating the importanceof vacuum cleaner as a perfect devicefor collecting dust particles!

In The Adventure of the NorwoodBuilder, Holmes says to InspectorLestrade, “I pay a good deal ofattention to matters of detail, as youmay have observed.” Indeed, he was aman who made the ‘mute witnesses’speak.

There was a real incident wherethe innovative method of enquiry was

adopted. In October 1904, a strangledbody of a woman was found lying in abean field in Germany. Searching thearea, the Police found only a heavilysoiled handkerchief as probableevidence. The police sought the helpof Dr. Georg Popp, a chemist whoowned a laboratory in Frankfurt. Dr.Popp observed the handkerchiefthrough the microscope and found tinycrystals of sand, coal, snuff and amineral known as hornblende.

Arthur Conan DoyleSir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle was bornon 22 May 1859 in Edinburgh, Scotland.At the age of nine, he was sent to theRoman Catholic Jesuit preparatory schoolat Stonyhurst. He then went to StonyhurstCollege and by the time he had rejectedChristianity to become an agnostic. From1876 to 1881, he studied medicine atthe University of Edinburgh. Whilestudying he also began writing shortstories, the first being published beforehe was 20.

Following his term at the University,he served as a ship’s doctor on a voyage

to the WestAfrican coast.He comple-ted hisdoctorate in1885. Hism e d i c a lpractice wasnot verys u c ce s s f u land so whilewaiting forpatients, hebegan writingstories. Hisf i r s ts ign i f i can t

work was A Study in Scarlet, a novel thathe wrote at the age of 27. It appeared inBeeton’s Christmas Annual, in 1887,featuring the first appearance of SherlockHolmes.

Future short stories featuringSherlock Holmes were published in theStrand Magazine. Holmes ultimatelyappeared in a total of 56 short storiesand four novels by him. Conan Doyle wasfriend for a time with the Americanmagician Harry Houdini. Theautobiographical work of Doyle alsoreveals his fidelity to magic, which is titledThrough the Magic Door.

Karl Rokitansky, who perfected the post-mortemtechnique and (inset) his book on pathological anatomy

Conan Doyles’ book containing all theHolmes stories

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Dr Joseph Bell, teacher of ConanDoyle on whom he based his fictional

character of Sherlock Holmes

Giovanni Battista Morgagni, the great Italian physician whobegan to match changes in the cadaver to the clinical

symptoms of the disease

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The police was suspicious of a mancalled Karl Laubach who worked atvaried places. He was also in the habitof using snuff. Laubach’s fingernailscraps were examined undermicroscope and it revealed the sameitems such as sand, coal and hornblende.Traces of vegetation that clung to thegarment also matched those from thecrime scene. Bits of scarf-fibres alsowere traced from his nail-scraps usedfor strangulation. Thus, everythingended well as envisaged by Holmeswho is seen advising in The Adventureof the Creeping Man: “Always look atthe hands first, Watson. Then cuffs,trouser-knees and boots.”

Evidences in LettersHolmes’s ability to trace out evidenceprovided by handwriting is wellplaced. Forgery with its old anddishonorable history is evaluated inwonderful way by Holmes in many ofhis stories. His penetrating eye ofdetail can be seen in The Man with theTwisted Lip when he says: “This man

has written the name, and there hasthen been a pause before he wrote theaddress, which can only mean that hewas not familiar with it. It is, of course,a trifle, but there is nothing soimportant as trifles.”

Holmes also had a clever look atthe use of blotting paper upon writingletters, which leaves a change in theshade of letters, but towards the end ofthe nineteenth century there was achallenge for him, with the popular useof typewriters. The forgers were happyto use it as a new device to serve theirdisguise. However, Holmes was alsothere to state his part. In 1891, when ACase of Identity was published, Doylespoke through Holmes: “It is a curiousthing..... that a typewriter has reallyquite as much individuality as a man’shand writing. Unless they are quitenew, no two of them write exactly alike.Some letters get more worn thanothers, and some wear only on oneside.”

Yes! That was an exceedinglyclever observation and until A Case ofIdentity was published nobody had everthought of such a possibility! Theimagination of Doyle triggered theminds of document examiners in policelaboratories and they found thattypewriters, even when spanking new,showed enough individual variationsto firmly establish identity. However,just as Astrology, sometimes thesepractices can also lead into the realmof pseudoscience.

We could say that Sherlock Holmeswas sometimes a bit overly enthusiastic.Contrary to popular belief, even ahighly trained document examinercannot reliably tell gender, age orpsychological traits from handwriting.An interesting incident occurred whensome doodles were found on the deskof the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair,attending the Davos World EconomicForum. Reuters reported that he wasnot concentrating and was “not a naturalleader.” It was a great shame for Blairand so graphologists were invited, toanalyse the scribbling. And to the greatsurprise those were that of Bill Gateswho shared the table with him at thesummit!

As Holmes has aptly put it “Thepress, Watson, is a most valuableinstitution, if you only know how touse it.”

Biological WeaponIt seems possible that Doyle waspersonifying himself through Dr.Watson who is stated to have graduatedwith an MD from the University ofLondon, in 1878. Doyle took hisgraduation from Edinburgh Universityin 1881 and incidentally it was thegolden age of microbiology, withlandmark discoveries by Robert Koch,Paul Ehrlich and Louis Pasteur amongstothers. It is not surprising that theHolmes stories contain numerousreferences to infectious diseases, evenreferring at one point to a bioweapon.

The Case of Thomas SmethurstUnlike many of the cases dealt with by Sherlock Holmes, this is not fiction. TheSmethurst Case was particularly important because during its trial a leading toxicologistwas forced to admit that his earlier conclusions were wrong. But the confession wasnot enough as it had led to a death sentence for the alleged murderer. An independentbody of specialists later recommended the release of the condemned, creating a longstanding suspicion by the British public towards forensic techniques.

The case was that Dr. Thomas Smethurst, a hydro therapist, killed a wealthywoman whom he befriended, through Arsenic poisoning. The testing was done by arenowned toxicologist Alfred Swaine Taylor, who adopted the recently developed testfor Arsenic by Hugo Reinsch of Germany. The test was positive, but the autopsyrevealed no trace of Arsenic. Then Taylor had to confess that the apparatus he used fortesting was already contaminated with Arsenic. But, the Judge was reluctant to admitit and a death sentence was decreed creating much public outcry.

The trial caught everyday media attention and the verdict was finally overturnedthrough an emotional plea for mercy to Queen Victoria. Dr. Smethurst received onlya 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 duringthese times (1859), Connan Doyle was born and brought up. Whether Dr. Smethurstwas 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 there.

A sketch showing Sherlock Holmes with Dr Watson

He didn’t claim anything, as hesays while acknowledging anerror in The Yellow Face:“Watson, if it should everstrike you that I am getting alittle over-confident in mypowers..... kindly whisper ‘Norbury’ in my ear, and I shall beindefinitely obliged to you.”

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In The Adventure of the DyingDetective, a fatal disease called “TheTapanuli Fever” is used as a homicideweapon by a criminal called CulvertonSmith. Smith cultured the bacteria ongelatin, brought them to London andinfected his nephew, who died withinfour days. He also attempted to infectHolmes, but Holmes anticipatingavoids the trap. According to Holmes,Smith was a resident of Sumatra wherethere was an outbreak of this diseaseamong his plantation workers. Hedenotes it to be “highly contagious bytouch”.

Several candidates have beenproposed for this ‘deadly Asiaticinfection’ such as Scrub Typhus,Typhoid, Anthrax and SepticaemicPlague as attractive possibilities, butthe most accurate diagnostic finding is

Melioidosis, which is also known asWhitmore’s disease.

It can be assumed that Doyleduring his medical career and travel asa ship’s doctor to the West coast ofAfrica might have experienced manydiseases of uncertain etiology. Tapanuliis referred to have fever, anorexia,sweating and severe fatigue as themarking symptoms and Melioidosisdeplorably fits the clinical standards.It was first reported from Burma byWhitmore and Krishnaswami in 1912.In 1987, Melioidosis was responsiblefor 20% of all cases of epidemics inThailand, which is geographicallysimilar to Sumatra, Indonesia. It iscaused by Berkholderia pseudomallei,which commonly affects rice paddyfarmers during the monsoon monthsof July to September.

Even with the availability of potentantibiotics of the eighties, mortality fromMelioidosis was very high, ranging upto 68%. As a strange coincidence,Berkholderia pseudomallei is culturable ingelatin agar and the septic shock can causefatigue, cold sweats and anorexia. Deathcan occur within 48 hours earning it thename the “Vietnamese Time Bomb”.Recently, the US Centers for DiseaseControl have identified it as a potentialagent for bioterrorism, following the“Anthrax letters” to America. CulvertonSmith’s postal delivery also has nowbecome a fearful fancy.

His Last BowHolmes has also been credited forinventing methods of studyingpoisons, stains, footprints, traces ofwheels, the shape and position ofwounds, but howsoever appealing thisclaim might be to the fans of SherlockHolmes, it seems that there is littleevidence to support it. Although thescience of forensics was still relativelyyoung by the time the Holmes storieswere written, many of the proceduresand methods that are often attributedto the imagination of Conan Doyle hadalready been in practice.

Ironically, it was the famouscriminal turned detective EugeneFrancois Vidocq who first made plastercasts of footprints on a crime scene. Hewas also responsible for studying theshape assumed by bloodstains as theyfall on a surface. The shape and positionof wounds were detailed in Lacassagne’sPrecis de medicine that appeared in 1878.A system of fingerprint identificationwas established in Scotland Yard from1901 – five years before Holmes used aforged thumbprint in the plot of TheNorwood Builder.

Thus, rather than inventinganything novel, Doyle throughHolmes did more than any other personto portray science as a valuable tool incriminal detection. He didn’t claimanything, as he says whileacknowledging an error in The YellowFace: “Watson, if it should ever strikeyou that I am getting a little over-confident in my powers..... kindlywhisper ‘Nor bury’ in my ear, and Ishall be indefinitely obliged to you.”

Mr N.S. Arun Kumar is a freelance science writer.Address: Crescent Apartments, Chelembra P.O.,Malappuram District-673 634; Email:yeyenyes@gmail.com

Amazing Facts About Sherlock Holmes� Sherlock Holmes was inducted as an honorary fellow of the

Royal Society of Chemistry on 16 October 2002. Holmes is

the only fictional character honored in such a 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 a variety of Holmes memorabilia. There is another

Holmes Museum in Switzerland also.

� Included within Holmes stories are references to 68 diseases, 32 medical terms, 38

doctors, 22 drugs, 12 medical specialties, 3 medical journals and 2 medical schools.

� According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Sherlock Holmes is the most

portrayed fictional character in films, 75 actors playing him in 211 movies.

Thus, rather thaninventing anythingnovel,Doyle through Holmesdid more than anyother person to portrayscience as a valuabletool in criminaldetection.

Staue ofSherlock Holmes

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