SHERLOCK HOLMES.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 3360, 28 October 1911, Page 8

SHERLOCK HOLMES.

FAMOUS DETECTIVE’S ORIGINAL.

THE LATE DR. BELL.

“HOW DID I KNOW THAT?”

A cable the other day reported the death, in Edinburgh, of Dr. Joseph Bell, the well-known Scottish surgeon, and the prototype of the famous detective Sherlock Holmes. When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s celebrated romance whs first published, 20 years ago, it was not generally known that the hero of the story had been drawn from life, and that the model for him had been a professor m the medical college in which Dr. Doyle studied. It has, however, long since been a matter of common knowledge that the late Dr. Bell was the original of the character, and in his latter days the deceased surgeon was among medical men generally referred to as “Sherlock Holmes.” ' Dr. Bell took his degree at the early age of 22, and for two years lie was assistant demonstrator of anatomy in the University of Edinburgh. * With his students he would go through the history of the case of an unknown patient in the manner with which Conan Doyle has familiarised us, and then turn to them and say sharply, “How did 1 know that ?” * afterwards explaining the process of reasoning by which he reached his conclusions.

Some interesting details of the man whose methods suggested to _ Conan Doyle his detective hero are given in the' following extract from a magazine article published some years ago: —

“A reporter for the “Pall Mall Gazette” has had and related for his paper a highly-interesting interview with the original of Sherlock Holmes. It appears that Dr. Bell has made use of his remarkable faculty not merely in the line of his profession, and for the astonishment of his acquaintances, but that it has frequently been employed in actual detective work, and in furtherance of the ends of justice. As might be expected he has paid special attention to medical juris-prudence. The Crown retains in Edinburgh a regular medical adviser in criminal cases and this medical adviser lias for some 20 years been in the habit of enlisting the' services of Dr Bell, although in these cases he has merely been retained as an expert, and has had no official connection with the Crown. The reporter who visited Dr Bell was in Edinburgh to report the Ardlamont murder trial, which had excited a great and widespread interest in England and Scotland; and in this case Dr. Bell had been retained as an expert adviser for the prosecution. “While he declined to give any reminiscences of his detective work that had not already been made public, he declared that whatever deductions he had been able to make that had been of service to the authorities had been ‘simple and commonplace.’ They had had come from the habit he himself had formed, and had tried to inculcate upon all his scholars— Conan Doyle among them—the habit of paying attention to what are commonly dismissed as unimportant things ‘T always impressed upon them, over and over again, the vast importance of little distinctions, the endless significance of the trifles.” To what important results this habit may lead is illustrated in the facts of Dr. Bell’s career, as well as in Dr. Doyle’s fiction, founded on those facts. One illustration of it is striking enough to be well worth giving in Dr. Bell’s own reported words-:—-This one struck me as being funny at the time. A man walked into the room where I was instructing the students, and his case seemed to he a very simple one. “Of course, gentlemen,” I happened to say, “he has been a soldier in a Highland) regiment, and probably a bandsman.’ I pointed out the swagger in liis walk, suggestive of the piper; while his shortness told me if he had been a soldier it was probably as a bandsman. In fact, he had the whole appearance of a man in one of the Highland regiments. The man turned out to be nothing but a shoemaker, and said he had never been a soldier’ in his life. .This was rather a floorer, but being absolutely certain I was right and seeing that something was lip, I did a pretty cool thing. I told two of the strongest clerks, or dressers, to remove the man to a side room, and to detain him until I came. I went and had him stripped. Under the left breast I instantly detected a little blue “D.” branded on liis skin. He was a deserter. That was how they used to mark them' in the Crimean days, and later, although it is not permitted n r.v.' Of course, the reason of his evasion was at once clear.” “After one knows* that Sherlock Holmes is not entirely the creature of the novelist’s imagination, but that his qualities are drawn from lire, many readers must be incited to develop those qualities in themselves. In the interview, from which we have quoted 1 , Dr Bell says, very truly and suggestively: I should just like to- say this about jny friend Doyle’s stories; that I believe they are inculcated in the general public a new source of interest- — the interest created by Richard Jeffries and the “Son of the Marshes.” They make many a fellow who lias before felt very little interest in his life and daily surroundings think that, after all, there may be much " more in life, if lie keeps his eyes open, than lie had ever dreamed of in his philosophy. There is a problem, a whole game of chess, in many a street incident or trifling -occurrence if one once learns how to make the moves.