The Medical Casebook Of Sherlock Holmes And Dr John Watson

  This Week For our second week looking at Victorian psychiatry we are going to have a look at an extremely outdated diagnosis – Hysteria. This is not a chapter for the fainthearted!   Sherlock Holmes And The Adventure Of Masongill Hall A story to accompany publication of The Medical Casebook Of Sherlock Holmes And Dr John Watson. Sherlock Holmes has retired to his farm on the Sussex Downs, whilst Dr John Watson has become a GP in the Yorkshire Dales. Watson is struggling to deal with the first weeks of the COVID outbreak, yet Holmes discovers that an old enemy is about to carry out a terrible crime right under Watson’s nose. It is down to the heroic Watson to save the day. Available from the Amazon Kindle Store .   Hysteria Hysteria + Sherlock I’m going to concentrate on references to hysteria in two of the stories, and just note brief mentions in three further stories.   Hysteria makes an appearance in “ The Adventure Of The Engineer’s Thumb ”...

  This Week We are going to take a look at Victorian psychiatry over the next couple of weeks. These were the hardest chapters of the book to write. Firstly it was challenging to choose which excerpts from the Sherlock Holmes stories to include. Secondly it was hard to find Victorian medical textbooks on this area of medicine, and the terminology at the time was very different to modern psychiatry terminology. Hopefully I have managed to produce interesting chapters despite these challenges.     The Illustrator Our page header this week is from the chapter on Insanity, and is a scene from “The Adventure Of The Beryl Coronet”.  “ The distressed Alexander Holder beats his head against the wall of 221B Baker Street” by Alex Holt Alex Holt is an artist specialising in original ink illustrations. He has a special interest in Comic Art, single image illustrations and covers. Alex is a student of the Edinburgh Atelier of Fine Art. He works in private commissions ...

  This Week Following on from last week’s sample chapter on Rheumatic Fever, this week we’ll take a look at the similarly named Rheumatism. These are largely unrelated conditions, and also little to do with the modern diagnosis of Rheumatoid Arthritis. Even in Victorian times, rheumatism was a rather vague diagnosis, though still an interesting one to look at.   Rheumatism   Rheumatism + Sherlock I was able to find 3 references to rheumatism in the Sherlock Holmes stories. It first appears in “ Silver Blaze ”, a Sherlock story that reads like a Dick Francis novel. Back in chapter 4 we encountered the use of a cataract knife in the story. We then learn how the knife was used. “ You cannot have forgotten the singular knife which was found in the dead man’s hand, a knife which no sane man would choose for a weapon. It was, as Dr Watson told us, a form of knife which is used for the most delicate operations known in surgery. And it was to be used for a delicate ...