Sherlock Holmes-The great ditector

Sherlock Holmes is a fictional character of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who first appeared in publication in 1887. He is the creation of Scottish-born author and physician Arthur Conan Doyle. A brilliant London-based "consulting detective", Holmes is famous for his intellectual prowess, and is renowned for his skillful use of astute observation, deductive reasoning and inference to solve difficult cases

"Holmes' belongings" including a magnifying glass, calabash pipe, and a deerstalker cap at the Sherlock Holmes Museum in London.

Conan Doyle wrote four novels and fifty-six short stories that feature Holmes. The first two stories, short novels, appeared in Beeton's Christmas Annual for 1887 and Lippincott's Monthly Magazine in 1890, respectively. The character grew tremendously in popularity with the beginning of the first series of short stories in The Strand Magazine in 1891; further series of short stories and two serialised novels appeared until 1927. The stories cover a period from around 1875 up to 1907, with a final case in 1914.

All but four stories are narrated by Holmes's friend and biographer, Dr John H. Watson; two are narrated by Sherlock Holmes himself, and two others are written in the third person. In two stories (“The Musgrave Ritual” and “The Gloria Scott”) Holmes tells Watson the main story from his memories, whereas Watson becomes the narrator of the frame story.

Conan Doyle said that the character of Holmes was inspired by Dr Joseph Bell, for whom Doyle had worked as a clerk at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. Like Sherlock Holmes, Bell was noted for drawing large conclusions from the smallest observations.^[1] Michael Harrison has argued in a 1971 article in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine that the character was inspired by Wendell Scherer a "consulting detective" in a murder case that allegedly received a great deal of newspaper attention in England in 1882.^[2]

Explicit details about Sherlock Holmes' life outside of the Adventures recorded by Dr. Watson are few and far between in Conan Doyle's original stories. Nevertheless, incidental details about his early life and extended families do construct a loose biographical picture of the detective.

An estimate of Holmes' age in the story "His Last Bow" places his year of birth around 1854. Commonly, the detective's date of birth is cited as 6 January.^[3]

Holmes states that he first developed his methods of deduction as a university student. The author Dorothy L. Sayers suggested that given details in two of the Adventures, Holmes must have been at Cambridge rather than Oxford and that "of all the Cambridge colleges, Sidney Sussex [College] perhaps offered the greatest number of advantages to a man in Holmes’s position and, in default of more exact information, we may tentatively place him there".^[4] His earliest cases, which he pursued as an amateur, came from fellow university students.^[5] According to Holmes, it was an encounter with the father of one of his classmates that led him to take detection up as a profession^[6] and he spent the six years following university working as a consulting detective, before financial difficulties led him to take Dr Watson as a roommate, at which point the narrative of the stories begins.

From 1881, Holmes is described as having lodgings at 221B Baker Street, London, from where he runs his private detective agency. 221B is a flat up seventeen steps, stated in an early manuscript to be at the 'Upper end' of the road. Until the arrival of Dr Watson, Holmes works alone, only occasionally employing agents from the city's underclasses, including a host of Informants and a group of street children he calls the Baker Street Irregulars.^[7]

Little is said of Holmes's family. His parents are unmentioned in the stories and he merely states that his ancestors were "country squires". In "The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter", Holmes claims that his great uncle was Vernet, the French artist. He has an older brother, Mycroft Holmes, a government official, who appears in three stories.^[8] He is also mentioned in a number of others.^[9] Mycroft has a unique civil service position as a kind of memory-man or walking database for all aspects of government policy. Mycroft is described as even more gifted than Sherlock in matters of observation and deduction. Mycroft, however, lacks Sherlock's drive and energy, preferring to spend his time at ease in the Diogenes Club, described as "a club for the most un-clubbable men in London."

It is unclear whether Holmes has any other siblings. In "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches", Holmes says, "I confess that it is not the situation which I should like to see a sister of mine apply for" leading some to suppose the existence of same. But he mentions this only to warn a woman in a case, taking her as his sister. Therefore, this may be a mere figure, which he turns to especially when lacking stimulating cases. Holmes is a habitual cocaine user, which he injects in a 7 percent solution, often using a special syringe that he keeps in a leather case. Holmes is also an occasional user of morphine, but expressed strong disapproval when he visited an opium den. All three were legal in late-19th-century England.

Dr Watson reflects Victorian medical orthodoxy by having no medical objection to Holmes' drug use. Morally, however, he disapproves of his friend's drug use, describing it as the detective's "only vice," and expressing concern over the effect it may have on Holmes' mental health and superior intellect.^[20][21] In later stories, Watson claims to have "weaned" Holmes off drugs. Even so, according to his doctor friend, Holmes remains an addict whose habit is "not dead, but merely sleeping."^[22]

A portrait of Sherlock Holmes by Sidney Paget from the Strand Magazine, 1891 in the man with the twisted lip