BMJ

Dr Watson: regular BMJ readerAuthor(s): Ross PhilpotSource: BMJ: British Medical Journal, Vol. 341, No. 7786 (18-25 December 2010), pp. 1322-1323Published by: BMJStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25766566 .

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Dr Watson: regular BMJ reader Ross Philpot brings Sherlock Holmes, Dr Watson, and their creator together in a new

adventure facilitated by the BMJ online archive

i CHAPTER I | "Holmes," said I, one fine morning, as we lit our ! pipes refilled with yesterday's carefully saved

j plugs and dottles. "For a change, I have a chal

| lengeforYOU." "Indeed, Watson?"

"It's a nice little problem of medical detec

j tion, to be set out with proper documentation

I and referencing, the whole project to be com

| pleted by the end of next week." "What, my dear fellow, have you and your

j mischievous colleagues at the British Medical

j Journal been up to this time?" "Holmes!" I exclaimed in astonishment.

! "How in Heaven's name could you have read ! my thoughts to perceive that it is indeed my j editorial friends and their famous BMJ that I I have in mind?"

"My good man, when I observe that a doctor i has spent sleepless hours scribbling in the mar

| gins of the latest edition of his favourite medical

journal and covered several foolscap pages with notes and lists, it needs no great effort of the

imagination nor great deductive reasoning to discern that something of that nature is afoot."

"Quite right, Holmes. I see your reasoning now. Well, what do you think? Should you and I collaborate to match up some medical comments in the Sherlock Holmes canon with articles published in the BMP"

"Surely, my friend. We'll need a list of doctors, and of diseases, plus some remedies, which I can provide from a combination of copious chronicling over the years and my good old

index, together with your accumulated readings from the BMJ, and then we can link them all up together."

"By Jove, Holmes, I'm much gratified by your immediate enthusiasm for this worthy project."

"But first, Watson, should we not ask our

selves a few pertinent questions about the rea

soning behind this seemingly simple challenge?

MEDICU, IVAMI

4 .i

The first question which we may ask ourselves is

'Why should we choose this topic at all?"'

"Aha, my old friend, the clue to that lies in the very wording of a proposal last year by the

BMJ and is to be found in its leader entitled 'The

newBMJonline archive,' wherein 10 particular authors are selected for mention including, and mark this, Holmes, the famous Arthur Conan

Doyle."12

"Very well, then. A second question that arises is 'Does the BMJ itself actually receive any men tion anywhere in our Sherlock Holmes literary canon?'"3 5

"The answer, pleasingly, is 'Yes.' We need seek

no further than the second paragraph of The Stockbroker's Clerk, set in 1889 and published four years later, where we read: 'one morning in

June, as I [that is, Dr John Watson] sat reading the British Medical Journal after breakfast, I heard a

ring at the bell followed by the high, somewhat strident tones of my old companion's voice. 'Ah, my dear Watson, said [you, Holmes], striding into

the room, 'I am very delighted to see you.""

Very good, Watson. Very good indeed. Is that where it starts and ends, or do we

have more?"

"You won't be disappointed to learn that there is in fact another mention of the BMJ. In The Adven ture of the Blanched Soldier, set in 1903 and published in 1926, you yourself remark on the pos sibility that a journal being read

by Dr Kent may have been the

BMJ. You said: 'You will remem

ber... that I felt round for points, asking you, for example, about the

paper which Mr Kent [the doctor] was

reading. Had it been the Lancet or the British Medical Journal it would have

helped me.'"

"Well found. Conversely, does the

BMJ mention either Sherlock Holmes or Doctor Watson?"

"Good question. Once again, the answer is a

definite 'Yes,' at least for Sherlock Hol mes, so supporting our mission

^^?:NX evenmrmer-"

"And where might that be?" * "Firstly, it's in a BMJ editorial

published in 1893, entitled 'The Method of

1322 BMJ 118-25 DECEMBER 20101 VOLUME 341

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WHODUNIT

Sherlock Holmes'6; very nice accolade there, Hol mes, don't you think? A certain author scores a

big mention too, thus: Tn creating the character of Sherlock Holmes, Dr Conan Doyle owed much to the training he received as a student of medical

diagnosis.'" "I note that this author was made mention of

for an interesting variety of reasons over several

years in the BMJ: in October 18937 and Dec ember 18?4."8

"Other mentions are made of you, Holmes, in articles in June 1895,9 July 1899,10 October

1899,11 December 1899,12 and January 1900."13

"I think we've done very well already, Watson. Let's move on to illnesses and injuries, and see what we can come up with next."

"Good idea, Holmes."

CHAPTER II Several days later, after having shared a hearty breakfast of ham and eggs washed down with the contents of a pot of strong coffee, we laid out our foolscap pages displaying the fruits of our

labours, and surveyed the results.

While Holmes had produced an impressive ; number of items of medical relevance from the

| 60 Holmes and Watson stories, I had delved into

j my records of the BMJ and sought out articles I on those topics that had been published in or about those decades in which the adventures had taken place. The outcome, then, was a

fascinating match up of the scientific with the lit

erary, apparently for the first time in the history of both the journal and of Sherlock Holmes.

"Wonderful, Holmes, marvellous. How do you doit?"

"A well trained

memory, Watson, a tidy uncluttered mind, a

comprehensive system of detailed note books and reference material, no interruptions, and a lot of strong coffee and rough shag tobacco?you know my metier."

"This is all very promising, Holmes." "You may be intrigued to know, Watson, that

the contemporary of your father, by the name of Arthur Conan Doyle, once had a single scien tific report published in the BMJ. Young Arthur wasn't even a doctor at the time, just a medical student. You won't find it under his full name, as it was attributed to a person identified only as 'A C D.' Nevertheless, it's all there to be seen

by anyone who chooses to look, at the top left

A well trained memory, Watson, a tidy uncluttered

mind, a comprehensive system of detailed note books and reference

material, no interruptions, and a lot of strong coffee and rough shag tobacco?

you know my metier

hand corner of page 483 of I ̂flj^^^H the issue of 20 September M^^^^^^l

"His topic was gelsemi- ̂̂ ^^^^^H num as a poison, a ^^^^^^^H ous choice title, given ̂ ^^^^^^H that the report actu- ^^^^^^^H ally a graphic first hand ^^^^^^^^M description of how he ^^^^^^^^H experimented upon him- ̂ ^^^^^^^H the ^^^^^^^^B physiological effects ^^^^^^^^^M gelseminumonhismind and body as he applied it '^^^^^^^^ as a treatment for his persistent neuralgia.

"Conan Doyle specifically refers to this self

experimentation in a letter to his mother in June 1879, when he writes: T increased the dose until I... had some curious physiological results. I drew them up and sent them to the British Medi cal..:"1' 15

"But Holmes, that sounds to me to be some

what ethically suspect." "Watson, I believe I actually know how Arthur

felt at such trying times."

"Interesting, Holmes. But remember, honi soit

quimalypense." "I'll ignore that playful barb, doctor. Again,

in November the following year, young Conan

Doyle wrote to his mother, 'the Ma'm," 'I am

going to write a case for the British Medical I will tell you when it

appears.' Evidently,

however, it never did

appear in that journal. So, young Watson, have

we reached the limits of what reason can sup

ply?" "Not quite, Holmes.

I've taken the trouble to consult the Medical

Directory of Britain for 1886 and am delighted to find yet another allu

sion to the BMJ on the same page on which is documented the details of James Mortimer, the

very doctor who brought to you that strange and ancient handwritten document recording the

legend of the Hound of the Baskervilles."16

"Fancy that. And just what is this extra men

tion of the esteemed BMJ, pray?" "A case of gastroenterostomy for cancerous

obstruction of the pylorus, by Arthur Barker."17

"Well, well, is there no end to the ubiquity of this journal?"

"It certainly is cosmopolitan in its tastes." "Now Holmes, back to the present, and to

the task we've taken on for ourselves. Having

I^^^^^^H succeeded in documenting the

^^^^^^^H connections we have uncov

^^^^^^H[ ered between the stories and

^^^^^^B published medical articles, ^^^^^^^B why don't we now package ^^^^^^H| them up and offer them to the

^^^^^^K BMJ for possible publication?" ^^^^^^B "And hope that they and their

^^^^^H| readers enjoy them as much as we

^^^^Hhave." ?Report by Dr James Scott Watson,

^^^^^^B BMedSc (Honours, physiology), MBBS

^^^^^^H (Adelaide) j^^^^^^B Golfe Josephine, South Australia,

^^^^^MP 6 January 1951. Note: Lest it be thought strange that Sherlock Holmes and j Dr Watson the younger could possibly have met in Adelaide ! in that year, it should not be forgotten that Holmes has j been said to have lived to the ripe old age of 103, having j been born on 6 January 1854.5 He might have travelled

by sea to that city much as Arthur Conan Doyle had done j in 1920, to deliver his first lecture on Australian soil in the j

Adelaide town hall on Saturday 25 September. Furthermore, j the young Dr Watson in our story, which should best be j regarded as a contribution to perpetuation of "The Game" j rather than as a pastiche, might have been the son of Dr

John Watson and Miss Mary Morstan, conceived in the throes of passion in the week of the adventure of The Sign j of (the) Four. After all, Sherlock Holmes was said to have j fathered a son with the woman Irene Adler, according to j Holmesian authority William Baring-Gould.5 j C Ross Philpot, senior consultant physician, j Adelaide, Australia ; rsphilpot@bigpond.com I thank fellow Sherlock Holmesians Mark Chellew, Bill j Barnes, and Phil Cornell for their wise comments on the j manuscript, and extend very special thanks to Phil for

j the original illustrations. I also thank Anna Witty, Roni j

Wayne, Rachel Davey, and staff of the library at the Queen j Elizabeth Hospital, Adelaide, Australia. I

Competing interests: None declared

Provenance and peer review: Not commissioned;

externally peer reviewed. j 1 Gunn Rl. Mr Holmes and Dr Watson. The Sherlock

Holmes Society. BMJ 1934;2:278. 2 DelamotheT. The new BMJ online archive. BMJ

2009;338:bl744. 3 Conan Doyle A. The original illustrated 'STRAND'Sherlock

Holmes. The complete facsimile edition. Wordsworth Editions Ltd, 1989.

4 Kli nger LS. The new annotated Sherlock Holmes. Vols 1,2 & 3. W W Norton & Co Inc. 2005.

5 Baring-Gould W. Sherlock Holmes. A biography of the world's first consulting detective. Rupert Hart-Davis, 1962. !

6 The method of Sherlock Holmes. BMJ 1893;2:1442-3. 7 Special correspondence: Manchester. BMJ 1893;2:866-7. ! 8 Literarynotes.B/Wyi894;2:1320. ! 9 Wanted: a Sherlock Holmes. BMJ 1895;1:1225. 10 Personal experiences of plague officers in India: the

epidemic in Poona. BMJ 1899;2:25-7. 11 The influence ofZadig on the progress of medicine. BMJ

1899;2:1120-1. ! 12 The method of Sherlock Holmes in medicine. BMJ

1899;2:1808. 13 Harveian Society of London: annual meeting, Thursday 18

January 1900. BMJ 1900;1:197. 14 From our archive. Arthur Conan Doyle takes it to the limit

(1879).B/W/2009;339:b2861. 15 RugmanF. Observe cases minutely, improve in my j

profession, write to the Lancet. BMJ 2007;335:1315. 16 Goodenough S. The hound of the Baskervilles. Based on \

the story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Webb and Bower, j 1984. |

17 Barker A. A case of gastro-enterostomy for cancerous j obstruction of the pylorus. BMJ 1886;1:618.

Cite this as: BMJ 2010;341:c6898

BMJ 118-25 DECEMBER 20101 VOLUME 341 1323

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