[22] Thomas Fowler of Stafford, England, proposed a solution of 1% potassium arsenite in 1786 as a general medicinal for a wide range of diseases, including malaria, chorea, and syphilis, though with little practical benefit. However, from 1845, Fowler's solution became a leukemia treatment and it saw use into the late 1950s.
[23] While many physicians of the era were still general practitioners, some had begun to specialize. For example, Dr. Percy Trevelyan was a specialist in nervous diseases (The Adventure of the Resident Patient).
[24] Sir Jasper Meek was one of the best physicians in London according to Watson (The Adventure of the Dying Detective).
[25] Wassail is a hot, mulled punch often associated with Yuletide. Historically, the drink was a mulled cider (sometimes ale) made with sugar, cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg and topped with slices of toast. Wassailing refers to a traditional ceremony to awaken the cider apple trees and to scare away evil spirits to ensure a good harvest of fruit in the autumn.
[26] Sir Henry Baskerville stayed at the Northumberland Hotel during his brief sojourn in London (Chapter IV, The Hound of the Baskervilles).
[27] We know that John Clay was the fourth smartest man in London (The Red-Headed League), but the rest of Holmes’ list has been lost to posterity.
[28] Newgate was one of the most notorious prisons in London and was in use from roughly 1188 to 1902. It played home to many famous individuals (including William Penn and Casanova), and was featured in many of the works of Charles Dickens and other Victorian authors.
[29] One of Holmes’ most famous expressions, but actually only used once in the Canon. “‘Come, Watson, come!’ he cried. ‘The game is afoot. Not a word! Into your clothes and come!’” (The Adventure of the Abbey Grange). It itself is a paraphrase of Shakespeare from King Henry V.
[30] To the modern reader, it is perhaps surprising that Lestrade and Holmes did not insist upon a fingerprint analysis of the vial of arsenic, which would have quickly answered many questions. The history of when exactly fingerprinting became widely used is a bit muddled, but Scotland Yard did not begin to employ it until 1901.
[31] Mr. Henry Baker also used lime-cream in his hair (The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle).
[32] Holmes must have appreciated the importance of Dr. Lowe’s case for him to impersonate a minister of the Church of England, which was an illegal act. That is likely why he chose to be a Non-conformist clergyman in the less urgent case of The King of Bohemia and Miss Irene Adler (A Scandal in Bohemia).
[33] Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832) was the father of the British historical novel. Although not explicitly stated, it seems likely that Watson was reading his epic poem Marmion (1808), which revolves around the Battle of Flodden Field, but is most famous for its Eighth Canto known as ‘Christmas in the Olden Time,’ which begins with: ‘Heap on more wood! the wind is chill; But let it whistle as it will, We'll keep our Christmas merry still. Each age has deemed the new-born year; The fittest time for festal cheer….’
[34] Rudolf Virchow (1821-1902) was the father of modern pathology. His great work Die Cellularpathologie (Berlin, 1858), was translated into Englishin 1860 by Frank Chance (Cambridge), but the polyglots Holmes & Watson could likely have read it in its original German.
[35] Holmes paraphrases himself: “I think, Watson, that you are standing in the presence of one of the most absolute fools in Europe” (The Man with the Twisted Lip).
[36] A puzzle box (also called a trick box) is an item that can only be opened through some obscure or complicated series of manipulations, which can range from two to hundreds of moves. Although often mistakenly associate with the Chinese, the puzzle box originated in the Hakone region of Japan at the turn of the 19th century as the Himitsu-Bako, or Secret Box.
[37] The carol that Watson is referring to can only be ‘I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day’ which was based on the 1863 poem Christmas Bells by the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Written during the dark days of the American Civil Way, the song tells of the narrator's despair, upon hearing Christmas bells, that “there is no peace on earth for hate is strong.” But the carol concludes with the bells carrying renewed hope for “good-will towards men.”
[38] Although they have attained a near-legendary reputation, the Baker Street Irregulars headed by Wiggins only appear in the earliest two cases of the Canon (A Study in Scarlet & The Sign of Four) and the case of The Crooked Man (dated to 1889). However, various non-Canonical works suggest that Holmes continued to employ them for many years.
[39] Limehouse Basin opened in 1820 as an important connection between the Thames and the canal system, where cargoes could be transferred from larger ships to the shallow-draught canal boats. Because ships crews were employed on a casual basis, replacement crews would be found wherever they were available, with foreign sailors in their own waters being particularly prized for their knowledge of currents and hazards in ports around the world. Crews would be paid off at the end of their voyages and, inevitably, permanent communities of foreign sailors became established. At Limehouse, there were colonies of Lascars and Africans from the Guinea Coast, and a Chinatown established by the crews of merchantmen in the opium and tea trades. The area achieved notoriety for opium dens in the late 19th century, but after the devastation of the Second World War most of the Chinese community relocated to the Soho area of London.
[40] The mark of a Chinese apothecary shop was a bundle of hay hanging under the eaves.
[41] The Compendium of Materia Medica was written by Li Shizhen during the Ming Dynasty. It is regarded as the most complete and comprehensive medical book ever written in the history of traditional Chinese medicine. It lists all the plants, animals, minerals, and other items that were believed to have medicinal properties.
[42] Of all of the various forms of leukemia, a rare subtype known as acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL) is particularly sensitive to arsenic, which is still employed today as part of its cure.
[43] The Bradford sweets case was the accidental arsenic poisoning of more than 200 people in Bradford, England, in 1858; an estimated 20 people died when sweets accidentally made with arsenic were sold from a market stall. The event contributed to the passage of the Pharmacy Act 1868 in the United Kingdom and legislation regulating the adulteration of foodstuffs.
[44] One of the first things that Watson recognized about Mr. Sherlock Holmes was that he had a “good practical knowledge of British law” (Chapter II, A Study in Scarlet).
[45] Waterloo Bridge was referred to with sad irony as London’s ‘Bridge of Sighs’ for the numerous suicidal leaps that took place from its railings. There was even an 1844 poem by Thomas Hood commemorating this sad tradition. John Openshaw was murdered on this bridge by the K.K.K. (The Five Orange Pips).
[46] Holmes would go on to condone justifiable private revenge again, most famously in the assassination of the king of all the blackmailers (The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton).
[47] Watson’s famous list of Holmes’ limits suggests that his knowledge of astronomy was ‘nil’ (Chapter II, A Study in Scarlet).
[48] When he refers to the Napoleon of crime, Holmes is of course speaking about Professor Moriarty (Chapter I, The Valley of Fear).
[49] It has been argued that the famous quote of Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749-1827) to Napoleon Bonaparte is apocryphal, though there is little doubt that Laplace was either a deist (as were most of the great scientists and philosophers of the Age of Enlightenment, including many of the founding fathers of the United States, as well as Victorians like Alfred Lord Tennyson) or an agnostic, and thus, the quote is certainly plausible. Deism is the belief that reason and observation of the natural world are sufficient to determine the existence of a Higher Power, accompanied with the rejection of revelation and authority as a source of religious knowledge, with a disbelief in supernatural events such as miracles.
[50] There is very little evidence in the Canon that Holmes possessed any particular religious inclinations. We
know that he made a special study on the Buddhism of Ceylon (Chapter X, The Sign of Four), and visited with the head (or Dalai) Llama of Lhasa, while living in Buddhist Tibet for two years (The Empty House). Watson even once described Holmes as sitting “upon the floor like some strange Buddha” (The Adventure of the Veiled Lodger). Holmes admitted that his “Biblical knowledge is a bit rusty” (The Crooked Man) and he also did not appear disturbed by the magnum opus of Professor Coram in which his analysis of the documents found in the Coptic monasteries of Syria and Egypt cut deep at the very foundations of the revealed Abrahamic religions (The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez). Holmes was also a passionate devotee of William Winwood Reade’s book, The Martyrdom of Man, which was a secular history of the Western world, with rather outspoken attacks upon Christian dogma (Chapters II & X, The Sign of Four). There are few instances of Holmes having any sense of a higher power. One such is when he referred to flowers as evidence of the “the goodness of Providence” (The Adventure of the Naval Treaty). However, a close reading of the case suggests that at the time of that comment Holmes was being purposely distracting, so any such reference must be viewed with suspicion. Holmes also comments on the terrible mystery of the universe at the conclusion of the grim case of The Cardboard Box. The most likely conclusion is that Holmes was either a Buddhist or a deist, or some combination of the two, and while those particular religious leanings perhaps situated upon him a skeptical viewpoint of some of the trappings of the Christian version of the midwinter solstice, they would not have limited him from enjoying the season as a whole, nor prevented him from developing his own interpretation of its deeper meaning.
Table of Contents
CONTENTS
Literary Agent’s Foreword
THE ADVENTURE OF THE MANUFACTURED MIRACLE
THE ADVENTURE OF THE MANUFACTURED MIRACLE
About the Author
THE ADVENTURE OF THE MANUFACTURED MIRACLE: Annotated
THE ADVENTURE OF THE MANUFACTURED MIRACLE: Annotated
THE ADVENTURE OF THE MANUFACTURED MIRACLE: Annotated
The Adventure of the Manufactured Miracle (The Midwinter Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes Book 1) Page 12