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Arthur and Sherlock: Conan Doyle and the Creation of Holmes
Arthur and Sherlock: Conan Doyle and the Creation of Holmes
Arthur and Sherlock: Conan Doyle and the Creation of Holmes
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Arthur and Sherlock: Conan Doyle and the Creation of Holmes

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2018 Edgar Award Nominee
Shortlisted for the H. R. F. Keating Award from the International Crime Writers Association


From Michael Sims, the acclaimed author of The Story of Charlotte's Web, the rich, true tale tracing the young Arthur Conan Doyle's creation of Sherlock Holmes and the modern detective story.


As a young medical student, Arthur Conan Doyle studied in Edinburgh under the vigilant eye of a diagnostic genius, Dr. Joseph Bell. Doyle often observed Bell identifying a patient's occupation, hometown, and ailments from the smallest details of dress, gait, and speech. Although Doyle was training to be a surgeon, he was meanwhile cultivating essential knowledge that would feed his literary dreams and help him develop the most iconic detective in fiction.

Michael Sims traces the circuitous development of Conan Doyle as the father of the modern mystery, from his early days in Edinburgh surrounded by poverty and violence, through his escape to University (where he gained terrifying firsthand knowledge of poisons), leading to his own medical practice in 1882. Five hardworking years later--after Doyle's only modest success in both medicine and literature--Sherlock Holmes emerged in A Study in Scarlet. Sims deftly shows Holmes to be a product of Doyle's varied adventures in his personal and professional life, as well as built out of the traditions of Edgar Allan Poe, Émile Gaboriau, Wilkie Collins, and Charles Dickens--not just a skillful translator of clues, but a veritable superhero of the mind in the tradition of Doyle's esteemed teacher.

Filled with details that will surprise even the most knowledgeable Sherlockian, Arthur and Sherlock is a literary genesis story for detective fans everywhere.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateJan 24, 2017
ISBN9781632860385
Arthur and Sherlock: Conan Doyle and the Creation of Holmes
Author

Michael Sims

Michael Sims's six acclaimed non-fiction books include The Adventures of Henry Thoreau, The Story of Charlotte's Web, and Adam's Navel, and he edits the Connoisseur's Collection anthology series, which includes Dracula's Guest, The Dead Witness, The Phantom Coach, and the forthcoming Frankenstein Dreams. His writing has appeared in New Statesman, New York Times, Washington Post, and many other periodicals. He appears often on NPR, BBC, and other networks. He lives in Pennsylvania. michaelsimsbooks.com

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Rating: 3.4074074444444444 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    History of Conan Doyle ending with his reaching success with the Sherlock Holmes character. Heavy on interesting facts, light on creating the story of Conan Doyle. Significant detail about Doyle's father and his illness without any particular conclusion reached. Credit given to Professor Bell for the reasoned approach to detection. Credit also given to preceding fictional detective characters. The most fascinating aspect was Doyle's apparent need to be a successful popular writer.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Some interesting aspects to this book, like similarity between Holmes and Doyle's professor, Bell. Surprised that there was no mention of Doyle killing of Holmes and then resurrecting him.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A great book. Sims writes astonishingly well about the early life of AC Doyle, and the difficulty in getting published in the 1880s. He writes about all of the magazines and papers that were exploding on both sides of the Atlantic.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This is an interesting biography / history of Conan Doyle’s life as a young man. The reader learns of the people and events that influenced and inspired him when he created his most famous character: Sherlock Holmes. There was the professor in medical school who had trained himself to keenly observe a patient’s demeanor, clothing, and general appearance and from those observable “clues” infer the man’s occupation, background, and even marital status. And there were the writings of Edgar Allen Poe, Wilkie Collins, Emile Gaboriau and others, on whose foundations Doyle built his own style.I also found it interesting to learn of the publishing business in this era, and stunned to discover that Donan Doyle had to basically sell his copyright in order to get that first Holme’s mystery published.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Rather too much detail on the influences prompting Doyle to invent the Holmes character - sometimes interesting - Riding a bicycle for two with wife Touie, who caught the train home from their outing!

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Arthur and Sherlock - Michael Sims

More Praise for Arthur and Sherlock

"Fans of Sherlock Holmes who want to know about the equally remarkable man who created him can learn a good deal from Arthur and Sherlock by Michael Sims. Mr. Sims has cast a broad net over existing sources to tell the story of Conan Doyle’s early life, how he came to create Holmes and the hurdles the young doctor surmounted to become one of the English-speaking world’s best known authors … Arthur and Sherlock captures both [Joseph] Bell’s central role in the making of Sherlock and Conan Doyle’s unstinting gratitude to him." —The Wall Street Journal

"Michael Sims’s engaging new book, Arthur and Sherlock, describes how Arthur Conan Doyle invented his famous detective … Enlightening." —The Washington Post

Many Holmes fans know the bones of the origin story, but Sims dives deep into Conan Doyle’s biography to put flesh on it. The physician-turned-writer becomes much more human to the reader in the process.The Seattle Times

"Sims’s account beats most [biographies of Arthur Conan Doyle] for sheer energetic readability, however, and Arthur and Sherlock is certainly the new century’s best introduction to the subject." —Christian Science Monitor

"Sims’s expertise in both literature and history is again on display … In Arthur and Sherlock Sims has written not just a wonderful narrative of the invention of a beloved character but a case study of the creative process. By following all the leads and tracking down all the clues that led Doyle to Holmes, Sims illustrates the miracle of literature." —Chapter16.org

A delightful piece of detective work.Nature

A warm and affectionate look at how Arthur Conan Doyle introduced the Great Detective and the Good Doctor to the world! Sims traces Holmes’s literary ancestors as well as Doyle’s personal contributions, producing a carefully researched but thoroughly readable work that will surely appeal to the millions of Holmes’s admirers as well as students of crime writing. —Leslie S. Klinger, editor, The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes

"Sims’ story effectively retells the story of the young Doyle as something of a Holmes himself, someone who could persuade readers that ‘seeming clairvoyance beyond the limits of direct knowledge was possible in the real world.’ The author’s deeply researched but reader-friendly take on Doyle and Holmes fits nicely along recent books by Michael Dirda and Barry Grant, and it stands, like Samuel Rosenberg’s centrifugal book Naked Is the Best Disguise (1974), as a work of literature all its own. Even the most learned of Baker Street Irregulars will enjoy Sims’ look at the making of Sherlock Holmes." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Sims makes clear just how much of [Joseph Bell’s] brilliant and theatrical persona was infused into Sherlock … [A] well-told biographical tale … There is much to observe here.The Dallas Morning News

Concise and well-written … [with] passages that read as if Dr. Watson was penning them … Sims’s skill and deftness with narrative biography will lead Sherlockians to hope that he continues the story of Conan Doyle’s life in a future volume.Publishers Weekly

Sims combines extensive scholarship with excellent writing and organizational skills to produce a work that is not only informative but eminently readable. What’s most interesting is how he places Doyle, Holmes and the genre in historical context.Minneapolis Star Tribune

What’s special is the magnifying lens the author uses to bring up interesting details … In the stunning middle chapters, Sims gathers the influences shaping Holmes. Not just the predictable ones … Holmes devotees will find much of interest here.Booklist

Sims makes this carefully researched book approachable as well as scholarly. Recommended for readers interested in Doyle and the genesis of the detective novel, as well as those seeking informative, entertaining reading.Library Journal

"In Arthur and Sherlock, literary historian Michael Sims traces some of Doyle’s grand adventures, including expeditions to the polar icecap and Africa, and shows how they became fodder for his early prose… . There is something in this marvelous book for everyone, and short, vivid chapters keep the pages turning. From early reviewers who couldn’t spell Doyle’s name to grand lunches with famous magazine editors alongside Oscar Wilde, Sims knows how to paint a picture that fascinates and delights. Arthur and Sherlock will take its place on the growing shelf of literary histories presented by this talented and eloquent writer." —BookPage

"Drawing connections between the adventures in Doyle’s professional life and the life of Doyle’s cherished character, Arthur and Sherlock will prove fascinating to Sherlock Holmes connoisseurs … Highly recommended." —Midwest Book Review

Sims carefully delineates the fortuitous confluence of the growth of plainclothes police investigators, the public’s insatiable interest in lurid crimes and the availability of cheap printed fiction in Victorian England. He then traces the evolution of fictional detectives from Voltaire to Alexandre Dumas and Edgar Allen Poe, which culminates in Doyle’s creation of Holmes … [Holmes’s] many fans will find this book fascinating.Lincoln Journal Star

This meticulously researched biography reads like a novel and will be welcomed by readers in various disciplines.CHOICE

"Impressively well researched, written, organized and presented, Arthur and Sherlock: Conan Doyle and the Creation of Holmes is a ‘must’ for the legions of devoted Sherlock Holmes fans." —Midwest Book Review

[A] lively literary biography. —Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review

To

George Gibson

with admiration and affection

By the same author

NONFICTION

The Adventures of Henry Thoreau: A Young Man’s Unlikely Path to Walden Pond

The Story of Charlotte’s Web: E. B. White’s Eccentric Life in Nature and the Birth of an American Classic

In the Womb: Animals (Companion to a National Geographic Channel television series)

Apollo’s Fire: A Day on Earth in Nature and Imagination

Adam’s Navel: A Natural and Cultural History of the Human Form

Darwin’s Orchestra: An Almanac of Nature in History and the Arts

ANTHOLOGIES

Frankenstein Dreams: A Connoisseur’s Collection of Victorian Science Fiction

The Phantom Coach: A Connoisseur’s Collection of Victorian Ghost Stories

The Dead Witness: A Connoisseur’s Collection of Victorian Detective Stories

Dracula’s Guest: A Connoisseur’s Collection of Victorian Vampire Stories

The Penguin Book of Victorian Women in Crime: Forgotten Cops and Private Eyes from the Time of Sherlock Holmes

The Penguin Book of Gaslight Crime: Con Artists, Burglars, Rogues, and Scoundrels from the Time of Sherlock Holmes

Arsène Lupin, Gentleman-Thief by Maurice Leblanc

The Annotated Archy and Mehitabel by Don Marquis

Contents

Overture: Remembering

Part 1: Dr. Bell and Mr. Doyle

  1.   A Super-Man

  2.   Your Powers of Deduction

  3.   Art in the Blood

  4.   Seven Weary Steps

  5.   Athens of the North

  6.   No Man of Flesh and Blood

  7.   Ode to Opium

  8.   Drinking Poison

  9.   Intemperance

10.   Dr. Conan Doyle, Surgeon

11.   A Wealth of Youth and Pluck

12.   The Circular Tour

13.   The Unseen World

Part 2: Prophets and Police

14.   The Method of Zadig

15.   The Footmarks of Poe

16.   How Do You Know That?

17.   Games of Chess, Played with Live Pieces

Part 3: Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson

18.   Dr. Sacker and Mr. Hope

19.   Bohemians in Baker Street

20.   A Little Too Scientific

21.   The Book of Life

22.   A Basilisk in the Desert

23.   A Born Novelist

24.   The Preternatural Sagacity of a Scientific Detective

25.   Truth as Death

26.   Watson’s Brother’s Watch

27.   Dread of Madhouses

28.   Adventures in the Strand

29.   Deerstalker

30.   To My Old Teacher

Acknowledgments

Notes

Bibliography and Further Reading

Index

A Note on the Author

Plate Section

What clue could you have as to his identity?

Only as much as we can deduce.

From his hat?

Precisely.

But you are joking. What can you gather from this old battered felt?

Here is my lens. You know my methods.

—SHERLOCK HOLMES AND DR. WATSON

IN THE ADVENTURE OF THE BLUE CARBUNCLE

OVERTURE

Remembering

A shiny brass plate suspended from a wrought-iron railing along the street proclaimed

DR. CONAN DOYLE

SURGEON

Patients wishing to consult Arthur strode along Elm Grove until they were three doors from its west end, where it met King’s Road. The sign stood before number 1, Bush Villas, the first of two narrow three-story houses squeezed between and sharing walls with other establishments. On the left, as seen from the street, rose the brick bell tower and elegant arching windows of the newly renovated Elm Grove Baptist Church. On the right stood the handsome curving façade of Bush Hotel, which advertised as both Commercial and Family and which boasted the largest billiard saloon in Southsea. Always preoccupied with sports and physical activity, broad-shouldered Arthur enjoyed playing billiards in the hotel and playing bowls on the broad green behind it.

The flat’s large, square front windows faced almost due north and thus received strong light without glare. Patients entered through the arched entryway on the left, adjacent to the church, where the front door opened into a hall that led to a small waiting room and a consulting room on the ground floor. Stairs led up to the surgery and a private sitting room, and another flight climbed to a pair of bedrooms on the top floor, which patients never saw.

In early 1886, Arthur Conan Doyle was a few months shy of twenty-seven. For less than four years, he had operated—not always with success—a medical office in Southsea, a bustling residential section of Portsmouth, England. Lacking the funds to buy into an established practice, he had resolved to build his own from scratch, and after a little research he decided upon Portsmouth as a promising setting. In local sporting circles and scientific societies, he was known for his sociability and his hearty, infectious laugh.

Four years after settling here, he was no longer so poor that he had to buy creaky chairs and a faded rug on credit to furnish the sitting room. He did not sleep in his ulster, as he had for the first couple of weeks at Bush Villas when he owned no bed linens. He did not have to cook bacon on a little platform rigged on a wall over the gas jet. He no longer borrowed money from his mother back home in Edinburgh. Gradually his income had climbed, but his fear of creditors had faded only when he married the petite and soft-spoken Louise Hawkins—nicknamed Touie—with whom he fell in love after caring for her younger brother during his last days. Patients still trickled in, but Arthur no longer peered anxiously down through the wooden blinds to count passersby who stopped to read his brass nameplate.

They were not rich, Touie and Arthur, but they were comfortable. The most important luxury that Arthur could now afford was more opportunity to write. Since moving to Southsea, he had spent as much time as possible at his desk, upstairs in the space to which patients were never admitted. He filled page after page with his neat, small script. Gazing thoughtfully out the window beyond his desk, he became so intimate with the view from his study window that later he wrote it into one of his novels—the sound of rain striking a dull note on fallen leaves and a clearer note on the gravel path, the pools that formed in the street and along the walkway, even a fringe of clear raindrops clinging to the underside of the bar atop the gleaming gate. With the windows open in warm weather, he could smell the damp earth.

Here Arthur wrote stories of mystery, adventure, and the supernatural, and rolled them up and inserted them into mailing tubes for the postman. Having once thought of these unsolicited writing efforts as returning quickly and reliably like carrier pigeons from the magazines and newspapers to which he sent them, he gradually met greater success. He also wrote articles about his hobby, photography, ranging from colorful accounts of steaming along the coast of Africa to technical advice on how to prepare lenses.

In the style of the time, however, most of his stories were printed anonymously, resulting in a growing reputation with editors while he remained unknown to the public. Finally he decided that he must write a novel. Only his name on the spine of a long work of fiction, he told himself, could begin to build readers’ awareness of him. He had written one awkward little novel whose only copy had been lost in the mail, but he was determined to try again.

He was drawn to detective stories out of his own interest. He had long admired the logical mind of Edgar Allan Poe’s unofficial detective C. Auguste Dupin. He had enjoyed the adventures of Émile Gaboriau’s eagle-eyed police detective Monsieur Lecoq. The bold man-hunters of penny dreadfuls, Charles Dickens’s Inspector Bucket from Bleak House, Wilkie Collins’s Sergeant Cuff from The Moonstone, Anna Katharine Green’s more recent New York policeman Ebenezer Gryce from The Leavenworth Case—many such detectives already cavorted in Arthur’s imagination when he decided to create his own.

He had no experience with real-life detective work. As he turned over plot ideas in his mind, however, he recalled his years as a student at medical school in Edinburgh—his birthplace, to which he returned in 1876 at the age of seventeen, after boarding schools in England and Austria. And especially he thought about his favorite professor, a short, hawk-nosed wizard named Joseph Bell. A surgeon and a brilliant diagnostician, he had impressed his young student in many ways. Arthur had always admired Bell’s oracular ability not only to diagnose illness but also to perceive details about patients’ personal lives. Arthur thought of the professor’s quirky habits—his intense gaze darting at fingertips and cuffs to read a patient’s history of work and play, his attention to subtleties of accent, to mud splashes on boots. He recalled Bell’s commanding way of speaking with such confidence that he won over every person who argued with him.

As a detective, Arthur thought, Joseph Bell would have approached crime-solving with systematic, modern knowledge. He would need practical experience in chemistry and forensic medicine, as well as encyclopedic knowledge of the history of crime. He must attend to the large implications of small details. Such a character would be a new development in crime fiction—a scientific detective.

In the late winter and early spring of 1886, at his window above Elm Grove, in his small office away from the scurry of marriage and medicine, among books and piles of papers, Arthur wrote page after page, sending his memory back almost a decade into the past.

Part 1

Dr. Bell and Mr. Doyle

The student must be taught first to observe carefully. To interest him in this kind of work we teachers find it useful to show the student how much a trained use of the observation can discover in ordinary matters such as the previous history, nationality, and occupation of a patient.. . . Physiognomy helps you to nationality, accent to district, and, to an educated ear, almost to county. Nearly every handicraft writes its sign-manual upon the hands. The scars of the miner differ from those of the quarryman. The carpenter’s callosities are not those of the mason.

—JOSEPH BELL, M.D.

CHAPTER 1

A Super-Man

So now behold me, a tall strongly-framed but half-formed young man, fairly entered upon my five years’ course of medical study.

—ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE, MEMORIES AND ADVENTURES

Arthur Doyle led the patient into a crowded gaslit amphitheater, through a cluster of medical students surrounding Dr. Joseph Bell’s chair, and left him standing before the professor. The man’s attitude was respectful but not servile. He did not remove his hat. In a Scottish accent, he explained that he had come to Edinburgh Royal Infirmary seeking treatment for the early stages of elephantiasis.

As usual with patients, at first Dr. Bell showed no expression, in his reserved way that seemed to young Arthur how a Red Indian in North America might behave. From childhood Arthur had enjoyed tales of the American frontier, and such imagery leapt easily to mind. Bell pressed his fingertips together as he leaned back in his chair, looked the patient over, and remarked for the benefit of his students, Well, my man, you’ve served in the army.

Aye, sir.

Not long discharged?

No, sir.

A Highland regiment? Although he spoke with the crisp accent called educated Edinburgh, Bell’s high-pitched voice did not match the tanned, muscular body that made him look younger than his forty years.

Aye, sir.

A non-com officer?

Aye, sir.

Then came what seemed a far-fetched guess: Stationed at Barbados?

Aye, sir.

After the patient departed, Bell explained his inferences—that the man did not remove his hat because he had been in the military, that he had not been long out of service or he would have regained civilian habits, that his air of authority indicated he had been a noncommissioned officer rather than a common soldier. And obviously he was a Scot. As to Barbados, he added, his complaint is elephantiasis, which is West Indian and not British. The patient might have contracted the disease in other parts of the British Empire—India or Afghanistan as well as the West Indies—but apparently Bell’s deduction was correct.

Bell had received no prior information about the man other than Arthur’s note of his illness. Although he was an excellent surgeon and clinical teacher, as well as personal physician to Queen Victoria whenever she visited Scotland, Bell was most renowned for his diagnostic skills. He tended to begin an interview by deducing personal details about the patient’s illness, profession, and life by flicking his gray-eyed gaze—half-critical and half-sardonic, Arthur thought—from hat to elbows to boots. He maintained that an observant man ought to learn a great deal before the patient spoke. Regarding female patients, he went so far as to claim that doctors ought to foresee which part of her body a woman was about to discuss by her posture and how she held her hands.

When he explained his reasoning, Bell was lecturing, not inviting discussion. Few professors and students mingled at Edinburgh University in the late 1870s; sometimes no words were exchanged with individual students. Many sat or stood before the students and delivered lectures, the salient points of which were to be recorded in notes scribbled by the array of silent young men in their dark coats and ties—some mustached or bearded, but many youthfully clean-shaven like Arthur. Arthur would pay his four guineas for anatomy lectures, for example, and would be expected thereafter to diligently attend class. However, Bell was more personable, more interested in his students, than most professors. He was known as an unusually kind figure, especially to women and children, as well as to students as long as they were prepared for class.

After teaching systematic and operative surgery for years, Bell was appointed senior surgeon to the infirmary in 1878. He was among the extra-academical instructors, professors not directly employed by Edinburgh University whose classes were recognized as available for credit toward a degree. Bell’s own mentor, the legendary James Syme, had led a campaign to recognize extramural instruction, which had finally been authorized in 1855, while Bell was a student. Under this program, which had long been flourishing by the time Arthur enrolled in 1876, students could study with surgeons and others at the internationally renowned infirmary, as well as with other small groups of medical professionals headquartered around Surgeons Square—Park Place School, Surgeons’ Hall, Minto House School, and others. They could attend classes or other instruction at the Royal Public Dispensary, the Edinburgh Eye Infirmary, the Royal Maternity Hospital, the Sick Children’s Hospital, and elsewhere in the city. They could also study for credit in Leipzig or Paris or other recognized medical universities.

Tired-looking young men in black coats or tweed, laden with books and notebooks, poured from the gates to the hospital, tapping their walking sticks against the stones and at times stepping aside to avoid a carriage clattering down the cobblestones. Among the many wards in the grand three-winged, U-shaped Royal Infirmary building, two housed patients whose ailments were considered instructive to the students who thronged the wide central staircase, often dodging pairs of nurses carrying a patient between them in a sedan chair. I WAS NAKED AND YE CLOTHED ME, read one of the signs between Ionic columns out front, and the other I WAS SICK AND YE VISITED ME. The charity infirmary was the culmination of a century and a half of donation and subscription—and where money was short, glassmakers had glazed windows without charge and joiners had donated sashes. Completed in 1741, the infirmary was proving inadequate to succor the hordes of suffering poor, and additional buildings were rising.

For the first time in his life, Arthur felt engaged by a course and a teacher. Eager to help his mother through financial straits—at least to keep her from having to contribute to his college costs—he was trying to cram each year’s classes into a half year so that he might spend the rest of the year assisting a doctor, getting his expenses covered and gaining experience. Eager to excel and curious about almost everything, he scrawled countless notes. At times it seemed to Dr. Bell that Arthur wanted to transcribe every word he said. Often, after a patient left, the student asked the professor to repeat details so that he might get them correct.

Joe Bell—as students and friends affectionately called him—was Arthur’s favorite professor. Rather short, with angular shoulders, an aquiline nose, and a weathered, ruddy face, he was an easily recognized sight around campus and town. Even at a distance, he was known by his twitchy, uneven walk—a brisk stride conquering a limp.

Working as clerk for the famed surgeon and teacher presented quite an opportunity for an ambitious student. Tall, broad-shouldered Arthur was quick-witted, forthright, and diligent; in his late teens, he was beginning to outgrow the rebellious temper of his early years. His eyes, with their unusual two tones of blue in the iris, were as busy as his professor’s.

Arthur had admired Bell’s theatrical diagnostic routine since before beginning work in the outpatient ward. Every six months, each surgeon appointed several dressers (assistants) to help him handle the traffic. Bell chose Arthur, along with a few other trusted dressers, from among many young men. Arthur did not think of himself as an outstanding student; he had earned grades of Satisfactory in all classes except for an S-minus in clinical surgery. But Bell came to consider him one of the most promising men who had studied under him—a youngster fascinated by all aspects of diagnosis and attentive to the large implications of small details. Surgical outpatients might walk in with any sort of complaint: wounds or chronic pain, ailments ranging from respiratory to gynecological. Bell demanded that students be prepared for whatever misfortune might appear. The new infirmary was completed in 1879, and during the next year fifteen thousand patients passed through its outpatient clinic.

Arthur and other efficient clerks interviewed patients in a side room and herded them quickly in and out of Bell’s examination. He sorted as many as seventy or eighty per day, noted details about their complaint or injury, and then brought them in one by one for a consultation—during which he often thought Bell learned more with a glance than had Arthur with his queries. When Arthur began working as clerk, Bell warned him that outpatient interviews required familiarity with the uniquely Scottish slang employed by uneducated locals. Although his parents were Irish, Arthur had been born in Edinburgh—on Picardy Place, in a three-story house of modest but handsome flats near the Gothic Revival parapets of St. Paul’s and St. George’s Episcopal Church. He assured Bell that he was fluent in the local vernacular. Inevitably, one of the first patients Arthur asked about his ailment proved incomprehensible: he complained of a bealin’ in his oxter. Bell was amused to have to explain to Arthur that the location of the pain was the armpit and the problem was an abscess.

From close observation and deduction, gentlemen, Bell would declaim confidently, you can make a correct diagnosis of any and every case. He was proud of his reputation as an intelligent observer. However, he would add, never neglect to ratify your deductions, to substantiate your diagnosis with the stethoscope—and by other recognized and everyday methods of diagnosis.

Bell would look over a patient and remark casually, Cobbler, I see. Then came the explanation to students, the leap from a detail that not one of the young men had observed: a worn place on the inside of the knee of a patient’s trousers. It was where a cobbler rested his lapstone, across which stretched the leather that was to be hammered into greater strength.

He pointed out to students other clues of profession that he insisted they ought to observe at a glance. Once he immediately identified a patient as either a slater or a cork-cutter: If you will only use your eyes a moment you will be able to define a slight hardening—a regular callus, gentlemen—on one side of his forefinger, and a thickening on the outside of his thumb—a sure sign that he follows the one occupation or the other.

Once Bell’s clerk brought in a mother and child. The doctor exchanged greetings with her and asked casually, What sort o’ crossing did ye have from Burntisland?—a town in Fife, on the Firth.

It was good, she answered.

And had ye a good walk up Inverleith Row?

Yes.

And what did ye do with the other wain?

I left him with my sister in Leith.

And would ye still be working at the linoleum factory?

Yes, I am.

To students Bell explained his mutually supporting surmises: that the woman had a Fife accent, that Burntisland was the closest town in Fife, and that the fingers of the woman’s right hand bore a dermatitis peculiar to workers in the Burntisland linoleum factory. You notice the red clay on the edges of the soles of her shoes, he added pointedly, and the only such clay within twenty miles of Edinburgh is the Botanical Gardens. Inverleith Row borders the gardens and is her nearest way here from Leith. And although she was carrying a coat with her, it was obviously too large for the boy accompanying her, so he must have an older sibling.

Quite easy, gentlemen, remarked Bell on another occasion, if you will only observe and put two and two together.

One of Arthur’s predecessors as Bell’s assistant, a student named A. L. Curor, had idolized Bell as Arthur did, and later called him a super-man. Bell’s family agreed with such students. When he traveled by train with his family, he entertained his children by observing details about their fellow passengers and, once the strangers had departed, by deducing their private lives from such clues. He would tell his children the occupations and habits of the strangers with whom he had exchanged nary a word,

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