Transcript
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Narrator (0:36)
It's spring 1877, in a lecture theater in Edinburgh Medical School. The room is cold, all stone and shadows. Rows of medical students file inside, the air laced with chalk dust and the scent of damp tweed and disinfectant. Thin light filters in through the tall windows, warming the polished wooden benches, which are now filling with scholars. A young man stands off to the side of the lectern, watching the room settle. At 18, he cuts a sturdy figure, tall and broad shouldered, with the square jaw and calm bearing of someone much older. His dark hair curls above the slightly worn collar of his frock coat. Her silver watch chain disappears into his pocket, and the ink from scribbled case notes stains his fingers. As clerk to Dr. Joseph Bell, he has made a note of every patient waiting to be seen this morning. It will be his duty to muster them onto the podium when their turn comes to be examined. Dr. Bell now enters with the energy of a man already mid thought, scything through the room, crisp and composed, his critical gaze sweeps over the students before he mounts the podium and calls for the first patient. His clerk quietly ushers a man in. The patient looks nervous. Cap in hand, boots muddied, he steps onto the stage as the clerk returns to his place. Notebook ready, Dr. Bell moves with practiced ease around the patient, lifting an arm, bending to examine a foot occasionally. He nods, as though confirming a suspicion in his own mind. Then he turns the chalkboard and scratches out the word observation, which he underlines twice. The lesson today is that to properly treat an ailment, one must use intuition, logic, and attention to detail to understand the whole patient. When the doctor begins to speak, he doesn't question the man but simply pronounces a series of observations. Gesturing to the boots, he points out the residue of red clay, which he identifies as distinct to East Lothian. Next, Belle draws his student's attention to the calluses on the patient's hand. Indicative of rope work, he says, but not thick enough for a longshoreman. Now he raises the man's hands to examine his fingers. The blackening on his fingernails isn't coal. He proclaims but more likely lime, and the salt stains on the cuffs suggest recent sea travel. He turns slightly to face the students and pronounces his verdict that the patient is a sailor who has been unloading lime cargo. Which, my good man Bell says, addressing the chap directly, will likely explain the cough you've been suffering with the man blinks in stunned silence. A few students chuckle nervously. The clerk smiles a wry, knowing smile. He has seen the doctor's performance many times before, but it never fails to impress. Almost a decade later, this clerk, a young man by the name of Arthur Conan Doyle, will remember how Dr. Bell's deductions cut through mystery. He will remember the hush of the theater, the awe of the onlookers, the incredulity of the patients as their secrets are laid bare without them saying a word. And when he puts pen to paper to sketch the character of the world's most famous detective, he will recall this moment, this man, as the inspiration behind Sherlock Holmes. While his fictional detective cold, analytical, preternaturally perceptive may have become one of literature's most famous characters, Arthur Conan Doyle himself was something far more nuanced and complex. A doctor trained in observation and diagnosis, Doyle was also a war volunteer, a campaigner for justice, a politician, and a believer in the spirit world. He battled typhoid in South Africa, led a legal campaign in England, earned a knighthood for his work in support of the British army, and spent years trying to communicate with the dead. In his lifetime he wrote ghost stories, political pamphlets, historical novels, and fantastical adventures. But it was a single detective, pipe in hand, who would immortalize him. So how did a young medical student from Edinburgh end up transforming crime fiction forever? What drove him to kill off and then resurrect the character? Who made him famous? And why did a man of science and reason spend so many years pursuing the supernatural? I'm John Hopkins from the Noisy Network. This is a short history of Arthur Conan Doyle. In 1859, in a modest tenement flat in Edinburgh's Newington district, Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle is born into a family of fading privilege and rising instability. His father, Charles, is a gifted but troubled illustrator for the government's Office of Works, a man with artistic talent and a romantic spirit who is slowly being unraveled by alcohol. His mother, Mary, is a well read, fiercely imaginative Irishwoman, the anchor of Arthur's early life. She not only holds the family together financially but inspires his passion for storytelling. Richard Pooley runs the Conan Doyle estate and is the step great grandson of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.