The following excerpt is picked from Arthur Conan Doyle’s Memoir. The language has been simplified without any modifications to the story.
One of the most notable of the characters whom I met was one Joseph Bell, surgeon at the Edinburgh Infirmary. Bell was a very remarkable man in body and mind.
He was thin, wiry, dark, with a high-nosed acute face, penetrating grey eyes, angular shoulders, and a jerky way of walking. His voice was high and discordant. He was a very skilful surgeon, but his strong point was diagnosis, not only of disease, but of occupation and character.
For some reason which I have never understood he picked me out from the drove of students who frequented his wards and made me his out-patient clerk.
This meant that I had to sort out his out-patients, make simple notes of their cases, and then show them in, one by one, to the large room in which Bell sat in state surrounded by his dressers and students.
Then I had ample chance of studying his methods and of noticing that he often learned more of the patient by a few quick glances than I had done by my questions. Occasionally the results were very dramatic, though there were times when he blundered.
In one of his best cases he said to a civilian patient:
“Well, my man, you’ve served in the army.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Not long discharged?”
“No, sir.”
“A Highland regiment?”
“Aye, sir.”
“A non-commissioned officer.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Stationed at Barbados?”
“Aye, sir.”
“You see, gentlemen,” he would explain, “the man was a respectful man but did not remove his hat. They do not remove their hat in the army, but he would have learned civilian ways had he been long discharged. Hence the fact that he was a recent discharge.
He has an air of authority and he is obviously Scottish, so his rank must be high, like an officer and he could be stationed in only two possible regiments. It could only be Barbados since his complaint is elephantiasis, which is West Indian and not British.”
To his audience of Watsons it all seemed very miraculous until it was explained, and then it became simple enough.
It is no wonder that after the study of such a character, I used and amplified his methods when in later life. I tried to build up a scientific detective who solved cases on his own merits and not through the folly of the criminal.
At first I called him Sherringford Holmes; then it was Sherlock Holmes. He could not tell his own adventures, so he must have a commonplace comrade as an accomplice—an educated man of action who could both join in the exploits and narrate them. And so it began with “Study in Scarlet.”
Bell took a keen interest in these detective tales and even made suggestions which were not, I am bound to say, very practical. I kept in touch with him for many years and he used to come upon my platform to support me when I contested Edinburgh in 1901.
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