Historic Sherlock Holmes Prototype

Everyone is famous for Sherlock Holmes, the hero of the stories of Arthur Conan Doyle, who, undoubtedly, is considered the classic of the detective genre. Many are still convinced of the fact of its existence, as evidenced by letters asking for help, which even now come to the address Baker Street 221 B in a rather large number. The facial features, personality, character, the use of deductive thinking and even a tobacco pipe: all this Doyle wrote off from his Edinburgh professor Joseph Bell.

Joseph Bell was a surgeon and lecturer at the University of Edinburgh, in which he surprised his students with brilliant intellect, including Arthur Conan Doyle, who first met the professor in 1877 at the age of 17.

Bell had an ambitious dream, to use his skills in the field of chemistry, toxicology, pathology, handwriting and science in the detection of crimes. For the first time such an opportunity for him was provided by his close friend Henry Duncan Littlejohn, thereby opening the gate to the dark world of crime for him. Joseph Bell helped Henry investigate the mysterious death of En Linsey, and concluded that one wound resulted in spinal cord injury, suppuration and infection, and the bacteria began to multiply under the skin and enter the bloodstream, which dilated the blood vessels and, as a consequence, caused heart failure . This conclusion established that death came from wound infection and helped the police to initiate criminal proceedings.

So, Joseph Bell together with Henry Littlejohn investigated dozens of cases, including the case of Eugene Chantrel, a rich French linguist. On January 2, 1877, they investigated the death of his wife - Elizabeth. Eugene claimed that she died because of the luminous gas, but Joseph Bell intuitively felt the murder. Since at that time there was not as developed as nowadays technical means, Bell used his senses and deductive thinking, which he himself called the "method". He noticed signs of vomiting on the pillow, which was a strange fact when poisoning with light gas. He later found out that the gas pipes had been artificially filed, and Elizabeth had already been poisoned by opium, which Ezhan ordered in an excessively large volume (30 bubbles) shortly before the incident, which was found by examination in the tracks of vomiting on the pillow. On January 5, Ezhan was arrested and soon executed.

This and many other stories from the life of the professor made a great impression on the young Arthur Conan Doyle, who also worked as an assistant to Joseph Bell, and every day studied in detail the behavior of the future prototype of his works.

After receiving a diploma and a Bachelor of Medicine degree in 1881, Doyle left Edinburgh University.

In March 1886, during the intensive growth of crime and incompetence of police, the idea of Sherlock Holmes arose. Already in 1887 the first story about Sherlock Holmes was published, "The Study in Scarlet Tones," and 40,000 copies were sold.

The history of Sherlock Holmes has become a sensation in the literature, which has been translated into dozens of languages and is still being printed around the world. Interest in Joseph Bell greatly increased among lovers of Sherlock Holmes, however, despite its popularity, Bell worked until 64 years, and then retired and settled in his elegant rural estate Moriswood, where he lived until 1911.