Article about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
John Gilbody
Here's an article I wrote for the Dec 1999 issue of "Hampshire Magazine" (UK). They wanted a piece about the County's most famous doctor of the Millenium. I hope you enjoy it! If anyone's interested, I'm happy to email an Acrobat file of the article "as printed" (including photos). Have also written Holmes reviews (e.g. SH in the world's medical literature 1966 to date), which I'll dig out and post later.
If there are any other members of the Sherlock Holmes Society out there, please let me know!
Best wishes,
John Gilbody.
STEEL TRUE, BLADE STRAIGHT -
HAMPSHIRE’S DOCTOR OF THE MILLENIUM
by DR JOHN S GILBODY
When Paul Cave asked me to write about Hampshire’s doctor of the millenium, I was taken aback. I could think of the most famous nurse - Florence Nightingale - and even the most famous writer wasn’t too difficult. Charles Dickens? Jane Austen? But the most famous doctor was less obvious, and I had to do some research. With public records being what they are, I couldn’t look back more than about 400 years. Another problem was the tendency of doctors to move around, so I decided to look for the most famous doctor to have practised in Hampshire. After delving into the history books, and consulting such bastions of medical history as the Wellcome Institute in London, I found the answer.
It is Spring 1999, and during my lunch break I drive to the village of Minstead, a few miles west of Southampton, to visit All Saints’ Parish Church. Under the branches of a large oak tree on the south side of its 13th century churchyard I find what I am looking for - the large cross-shaped gravestone of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who is buried there along with his wife Jean. It is a fitting resting place, as Doyle had lived at Bignell Wood - a house on the northern edge of the parish - and he referred to Minstead Church in his novel The White Company. At the base of the carved gravestone is a large block, which carries the following inscription:
STEEL TRUE
BLADE STRAIGHT
ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
KNIGHT
PATRIOT, PHYSICIAN & MAN OF LETTERS
22 MAY 1859-7 JULY 1930
AND HIS BELOVED, HIS WIFE
JEAN CONAN DOYLE
REUNITED 27 JUNE 1940
A lesser known fact is that the original grave marker was made of wood - a gift from a local craftsman - and is still kept in the tower. If you ask Peter Murphy the Rector nicely, he may agree to show it to you!
There are plenty of facts about Conan Doyle, but what was he like as a person? Thankfully, some rare recordings allow us to go beyond the written word. Travel back with me to 1930, and shortly before his death a 70-year-old Conan Doyle records a gramophone record. His accent is melodious, softly Scottish, careful and deliberate. "I was educated in a very severe and critical school of medical thought, especially coming under the influence of Dr Bell of Edinburgh who had the most remarkable powers of observation. He prided himself that when he looked at a patient he could tell not only their disease, but very often their occupation and place of residence. Reading some detective stories I was struck by the fact that their results were obtained in nearly every case by chance. I thought I would try my hand at writing a story in which the hero would treat crime as Dr Bell treated disease and where science would take the place of chance." This is perhaps the most authentic record of the origin of Sherlock Holmes.
Despite the fame of Holmes, Doyle’s main interest was spiritualism, and in a film made a year earlier by Fox-Case Movietone, he spoke mainly on this subject. A monocle hangs from his double-breasted jacket. He has the fatherly appearance of countless movie Watsons. "There are two things that people always ask me," he begins. "One is how I came to write the Sherlock Holmes stories, the other is about how I came to have psychic experiences and to take so much interest in that question." He states that he became convinced that spiritualism was all-important "in the time of the [First World] war when all these splendid young fellows were disappearing from our view. ... When I talk on this subject I’m not talking about what I believe, I’m not talking about what I think, I’m talking about what I know." He emphasises that he always had witnesses and proof. Indeed, Conan Doyle promised his wife that when he died he would provide her with the ultimate evidence of life beyond the grave. Sadly for all of us, this proof never came. Most famously, Conan Doyle declared the Cottingley Fairy photographs to be genuine in 1922, although these are now known to be fake. A movie about this event - FairyTale: A True Story - was recently produced.
Of all Conan Doyle’s achievements, the greatest was undoubtedly his prolific writing. Whether letters, poems, newspaper columns, magazine stories or novels, Conan Doyle turned his hand to all of them. His crowning achievement was the most famous fictional character of all time - Sherlock Holmes - about whom more movies have been made (starting in 1903) than any other character. In December 1893 (the year Henry Ford produced his first car), Conan Doyle killed off Holmes in a struggle with Moriarty - the "Napoleon of crime" - at the Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland. The reason? He preferred writing historical and romantic fiction. He wrote to his mother: "I think of slaying Holmes ... and winding him up for good and all. He takes my mind from better things." Despite this, Conan Doyle later admitted that he "buried his chequebook" along with Holmes! The event shocked the world, and was widely reported by the media. People wore black armbands, and 20,000 subscriptions to the Strand Magazine were cancelled. Conan Doyle initially resisted attempts to resurrect Holmes, but relented in 1901 when he wrote The Hound of the Baskervilles. Other characters to have graced the pen of Conan Doyle included Brigadier Gerard and Professor Challenger. The latter character first appeared in the novel The Lost World, which has been the inspiration for several very famous movies.
He fought for the underdog
Conan Doyle wrote to the newspapers on many topics, and was always
a strong campaigner for the underdog. His interests in medicine and crime
solving came together in 1907, when he wrote to the Lancet and British
Medical Journal to request the opinion of ophthalmologists as to whether
George Edalji could have mutilated a pony as charged, in view of his severe
myopic astigmatism. Edalji was sentenced to seven years in prison based
on dubious evidence, and Conan Doyle's investigations and articles caused
a storm of indignation throughout the country. A Government committee was
formed to report on the case, and the Law Society re-admitted Edalji to
their roll of solicitors.
He was a fine sportsman
Conan Doyle was a prominent cricketer - once capturing the wicket of
the great W.G. Grace - and football player. He was a member of the British
motor-racing team in the Prince Henry tour of 1911, and also skied, played
golf and rugby, indulged in rifle shooting, and was an amateur boxer. Most
notably, he invented cross-country skiing while in Switzerland.
He was a patriot
In 1896, Conan Doyle was a war correspondent in Egypt, observing Kitchener’s
desert campaigns. During the Boer War in 1900 he served as senior physician
at the Langman Field Hospital. After observing the epidemic of enteric
fever amongst the troops he wrote a moving account to the British Medical
Journal stating that "we lost more from the enteric than from the bullet
in South Africa." Doyle concluded that: "There is one mistake we have made,
and it is one which will not be made in any subsequent campaign. Inoculation
for enteric was not made compulsory. If it had been so I believe that we
should have escaped from most of its troubles." This recommendation was
remarkable in that typhoid vaccine was not widely known at the time. A
Royal Commission was set up - at which Doyle gave evidence - and military
policy was changed. More broadly, Doyle was a great advocate of routine
vaccination for the country as a whole.
Following the Boer War, there was an extraordinary outbreak of defamation around the world over Britain's conduct, and this prompted Conan Doyle to write a short pamphlet - The War in South Africa: Its Cause and Conduct - which was widely translated. It was patriotic, though not overtly propagandic, and made Doyle something of a national hero. Indeed, the favourable reaction to the pamphlet led to Doyle being knighted in 1902. Interestingly, he initially declined the honour thinking it was for creating Sherlock Holmes, but was persuaded to accept it when he was informed that it was for "something serious"!
He was an adventurer
Conan Doyle craved adventure. While a fourth year medical student he
spent seven months on an Arctic whaler as a ship’s surgeon. Following graduation
he held a similar position for three months on an African steamer, and
throughout his life travelled widely around the world. He adventured in
other ways too, and on one occasion self-experimented with gelsemium "to
ascertain how far one might go in taking the drug, and what the primary
symptoms of an overdose might be." This is from his letter to the British
Medical Journal in 1879: "On Saturday and Sunday, I took three drachms
and 200 minims. The diarrhoea was so persistent and prostrating, that I
must stop at 200 minims. I felt great depression and a severe frontal headache.
The pulse was still normal, but weak." Deaths had been widely reported
from doses of less than half this amount, so he was a brave man indeed!
But what of Hampshire? Conan Doyle arrived at Clarence Pier in Southsea in June 1882, and practised there as a general practitioner until December 1890. Starting from nothing, he built up his practice to £300 a year (although this was not sustained), and pursued an impressive range of activities. Over the course of a single year, for example, he managed to run his practice; write two novels, a medical research thesis and a number of short stories; play cricket, football and bowls; pursue his hobby of photography; act as Secretary of the Literary Society; and get married! There is, however, a great irony about Conan Doyle’s time in Southsea. Though probably the most famous doctor to have practised in Hampshire, it was the very failure of his practice to thrive that led Doyle - in these moments of solitude - to write the Holmes and other stories! As Doyle said himself: "An unkind American once remarked that the most sinister feature of my career was that no living patient of mine had ever yet been seen." As a doctor, I feel something of a traitor saying this, but what we would have lost if his practice had succeeded......
There are no records of Conan Doyle’s conduct with patients during his years of general practice in Southsea, but he is well-known to have been a humanist. Here is a description, from a colleague, of his behaviour towards patients as a medical student: "Conan Doyle impressed me chiefly by his very kind and considerate manner towards the poor people who came to the out-patient department, whom I’m afraid some of us were in the habit of treating somewhat cavalierly." In 1900, while serving as a voluntary physician in South Africa during the Boer War it was said: "It was difficult to associate him with the author of Sherlock Holmes: he was a doctor pure and simple, an enthusiastic doctor too. I never saw a man throw himself into duty so thoroughly heart-and-soul. ... It fascinated me to watch their cheery doctor carrying the sunshine with him wherever he went, worshipped by all." In an address to medical students at St. Mary’s Hospital in London in 1910, Conan Doyle stated: "There is another facet which life will teach you, which is the value of kindliness and humanity as well as knowledge. A strong and kindly personality is as valuable an asset as actual learning. ... I have known men in the profession who were stuffed with accurate knowledge, and yet were so cold in their bearing, so unsympathetic in their attitude, assuming the role rather of a judge than a friend, that they left their half-frozen patients all the worse for their contact." During a scientific era when doctors increasingly looked at patients as just the vehicle for a disease, Conan Doyle believed in holistic, humanistic medicine and showed concern for the patient as a thinking and feeling individual. Just in time for the next millenium, this approach to medicine is thankfully returning, and is another example of how Conan Doyle was way ahead of his time. Ironically, he prompted the opposite trend in detective work, namely the development of a scientific approach.
So, whenever you read the adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson,
Professor Challenger, Brigadier Gerard, or his other creations, think of
Southsea and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and be inspired! If we all lived to
our full potential as he did, and still managed to be "steel true" and
"blade straight", the world would be a much better place!
Carl L. Heifetz
G. Norton, Esquire aka Carl L. Heifetz
Private Consulting Microbiologist
<micr...@gte.net>