had been sent to him from New Zealand, and the previous day a great packet of documents relating to a disputed will had been received from Bristol. But the suggestions are seldom practicable. Other letters come from people who have been reading the latest of his stories, saying whether they guessed the mystery or not. His reason for refraining from writing any more stories for a while is a candid one. He is fearful of spoiling a character of which he is particularly fond, but he declares that already he has enough material to carry him through another series, and merrily assures me that he thought the opening story of the next series of "Sherlock Holmes," to be published in this magazine, was of such an unsolvable character, that he had positively bet his wife a shilling that she would not guess the true solution of it until she got to the end of the chapter!
After my visit to Dr. Doyle, I communicated with Mr. Joseph Bell, in Edinburgh—the gentleman whose ingenious personality suggested Sherlock Holmes to his old pupil. The letter he sent in reply is of such interest that it is appended in its entirety:—
2, Melville-crescent,
Edinburgh, June 16, 1892.
Mr. Joseph Bell.
From a Photo. by A. Swan Watson, Edinburgh.
Dear Sir,—You ask me about the kind of teaching to which Dr. Conan Doyle has so kindly referred, when speaking of his ideal character, "Sherlock Holmes." Dr. Conan Doyle has, by his imaginative genius, made a great deal out of very little, and his warm remembrance of one of his old teachers has coloured the picture. In teaching the treatment of disease and accident, all careful teachers have first to show the student how to recognise accurately the case. The recognition depends in great measure on the accurate and rapid appreciation of small points in which the diseased differs from the healthy state. In fact, the student must be taught to observe. To interest him in this kind of work we teachers find it useful to show the student how much a trained use of the observation can discover in ordinary matters such as the previous history, nationality, and occupation of a patient.
The patient, too, is likely to be impressed by your ability to cure him in the future if he sees you, at a glance, know much of his past. And the whole trick is much easier than it appears at first.
For instance, physiognomy helps you to nationality, accent to district, and, to an educated ear, almost to county. Nearly every handicraft writes its sign manual on the hands. The scars of the miner differ from those of the quarryman. The carpenter's callosities are not those of the mason. The shoemaker and the tailor are quite different.
The soldier and the sailor differ in gait, though last month I had to tell a man who said he was a soldier that he had been a sailor in his boyhood. The subject is endless: the tattoo marks on hand or arm will tell their own tale as to voyages; the ornaments on the watch chain of the successful settler will tell you where he made his money. A New Zealand squatter will not wear a gold mohur, nor an engineer on an Indian railway a Maori stone. Carry the same idea of using one's senses accurately and constantly, and you will see that many a surgical case will bring his past history, national, social, and medical, into the consulting-room as he walks in. Dr. Conan Doyle's genius and intense imagination has on this slender basis made his detective. stories a distinctly new departure, but he owes much less than he thinks to yours truly Joseph Bell.
