Sequeira - Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Was Not

Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Was Not

Conceived of and Edited by

Christopher Sequeira

Foreword by

Leslie S. Klinger

This is a work of fiction. The events and characters portrayed herein are imaginary and are not intended to refer to specific places, events or living persons. The opinions expressed in this manuscript are solely the opinions of the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of the publisher.

Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Was Not

All Rights Reserved

ISBN-13: 978-1-925759-86-0

V1.0

All stories in this anthology are copyright 2019, the authors of each story.

Interior art this edition copyright 2014-19, Philip Cornell.

Cover Art this edition copyright 2019 Luke Spooner.

This ebook may not be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in whole or in part by any means, including graphic, electronic, or mechanical without the express written consent of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Printed in Palatino Linotype and Nightmare Pills.

IFWG Publishing Australia
Melbourne

www.ifwgaustralia.com

Respectfully dedicated to the memory of both

Harlan Ellison

and

Marty Shapiro.

Some years ago I was speaking to Marty Shapiro (a wonderful man who once did me a great professional kindness at no charge that avoided me getting into a very awkward contractual situation) and I asked Marty if he thought his client, Harlan Ellison, might like to consider writing a story for this anthology idea I had. Marty was an agent to greats; not just Ellison, but also to other grandmasters, like Robert Bloch. But in all of our few dealings Marty treated mea comparable nobody who hed only ever known via email or phonewith friendliness, candour and incredible generosity.

So, Marty again treated me with largesse, and he talked to Mr Ellison, and Mr Ellison eventually insisted on me phoning him directly.

The details of that astounding phone call (Ellison! Live, on the phone! Sounding as energetic, and brilliant, and as no-bullshit as in any video or audio presentation Id ever heard him on!) deserve a full description by me in another forum one day, but suffice to say for now that Mr Ellison (he told me to call him Harlan, and I still have trouble with that) told me he loved my anthology idea (which back then I was entitling Sherlock Holmes and Doctor-WHAT?!).

I can also reveal Mr Ellison had an idea for writing a particular type of encounter of Holmes and a very particular Doctor. Sadly, timing and the stroke he had later made that impossible, and of course he passed away in recent months (as did Marty). But Mr Ellisons idea, I have to say, was of his typical genius-level of creativity. One day, if Im lucky, I may find a suitable and properly respectful way to present that idea to the millions of fans he had.

Regardless, both Marty and Harlan (OK, Ill refer to him that way now), those two sterling men, are part of the reason I persevered to make this anthology become a reality when the original publication plan went by the wayside. It is therefore very important to me they both be thanked upfront of this volume.

They were titans in their respective professions, and as such giants usually are, they displayed the effortless, uncontrived, uncommon generosity-of-spirit that people who have not a single damn thing to prove to anyone possess. I was just so, so lucky to have personally experienced that.

To Marty and Harlan.

Christopher Sequeira

Burwood, NSW, Australia.

February, 2019.

Foreword: Sherlock Holmes Among the Doctors

Leslie S. Klinger

D uring Sherlock Holmess active years in the late 19th century, doctors of medicine were relatively populous in England, in a ratio of slightly more than one per one hundred persons. This is in sharp contrast to the ratio in the U.S. today, which is about two per 1,000 persons. In addition to doctors, patients were served by surgeons (only one hundred years after being classed with barbers) and apothecaries. Despite the popularity of the profession, however, medical education was little regulated in the 19 th century, though London University and Edinburgh Universitytraining grounds for two men familiar to uswere highly regarded, and doctors still suffered from middling reputations, often regarded as primarily motivated by sales of (their own) nostrums.

It is little wonder that the Sherlock Holmes canon is similarly well-populated by doctors. Doctors appear in thirty-six of the sixty stories, as might be expected from tales largely penned by a physician, even one as inactive as John H. Watson, M.D. Arthur Conan Doyle, who had a great deal to do with the Sherlock Holmes stories, albeit in a vague role, was also a physician, and it is certain that his involvement with the stories was spurred in large part by his association with Dr Joseph Bell. Dr Bell, one of Doyles instructors at Edinburgh University, was possessed of legendary observational skills and, although the details are vague, seemed to be employed by Queen Victoria as some sort of special investigator. Bell apparently believed that Sherlock Holmes was a creature of fiction, however, and in 1892, he wrote an essay for The Bookman magazine in which he claimed that he was the model for Sherlock Holmes. There is no suggestion that Holmes knew or even knew of Bell, and the evidence that Holmes knew Doyle is slim. Watson may well have come into contact with Doyle, however, for there is an apocryphal suggestion (The Field Bazaar) that Watson may also have attended Edinburgh University. Whatever the case, Bells essay was reprinted (probably at the behest of Doyle, in an effort to bolster sales) as an introduction to the 1893 edition of A Study in Scarlet .

Doyle himself seems to have viewed his career in medicine as thrust upon him. It had been determined that I should be a doctor, chiefly, I think, because Edinburgh was so famous a centre for medical learning, Doyle wrote in his autobiography Memories and Adventures . It meant another long effort for my mother, but she was very brave and ambitious where her children were concerned, and I was not only to have a medical education, but to take the University degree, which was a larger matter than a mere licence to practise. Although later he expressed his joy in putting the practice of medicine behind him to pursue a literary career, he obviously took great pride in the medical profession. Doyle penned a number of stories and books about physicians, including the self-revelatory Round the Red Lamp: Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life , a collection of medical stories, some undoubtedly reminiscences, published in 1894, and The Stark Munro Letters (1895), a thinly disguised version of Doyles medical experiences in Southsea; and of course doctors appeared in many of his other works as well.

John Watsons medical practices appeared to have placed little demand on his time, to the good fortune of readers everywhere. Although there were spurts of professional enthusiasmusually generated, it appears, by the urgings of a wifehis uncanny ability to drop everything to take up an adventure with Holmes, or to call in a locum tenens to cover for him on a moments notice, placed him in the centre of many an adventure. Among Watsons accounts, The Resident Patient, The Engineers Thumb, and The Hound of the Baskervilles arose out of a doctors concern for his patient, and stories like The Creeping Man and The Blanched Soldier, neither of which involved a crime, essentially revolve around proper medical diagnosis rather than detective work.