Review Endeavour Vol.28 No.

3 September 2004

Sherlock Holmes: scientific detective

Laura J. Snyder
St John’s University, 8000 Utopia Parkway, Jamaica, NY 11439, USA

Sherlock Holmes was intended by his creator, Arthur
Conan Doyle, to be a ‘scientific detective’. Conan Doyle
criticized his predecessor Edgar Allan Poe for giving his
creation – Inspector Dupin – only the ‘illusion’ of
scientific method. Conan Doyle believed that he had
succeeded where Poe had failed; thus, he has Watson
remark that Holmes has ‘brought detection as near an
exact science as it will ever be brought into the world.’
By examining Holmes’ methods, it becomes clear that
Conan Doyle modelled them on certain images of
science that were popular in mid- to late-19th century
Britain. Contrary to a common view, it is also evident
that rather than being responsible for the invention of
forensic science, the creation of Holmes was influenced
by the early development of it.
Thus, the scientist requires the power of making
‘retrospective prophesies’.
In ‘The Five Orange Pips’, Holmes describes his method in
much the same way as Huxley had characterized the method
of the historical sciences, including the reference to Cuvier:
The ideal reasoner.would, when he had once been shown
a single fact in all its bearings, deduce from it not only all
the chain of events which led up to it but also all the results
which would follow from it. As Cuvier could correctly
describe a whole animal by the contemplation of a single
bone, so the observer who has thoroughly understood one
link in a series of incidents should be able to accurately
state all the other ones, both before and after.

Sherlock Holmes made his first appearance in A Study

in Scarlet, published in 1887 (Figure 1). Early in their
acquaintance, Watson reads Holmes’ article ‘The Book of
Life’, in which Holmes describes ‘The Science of Deduction
and Analysis’. This science requires the ability to reason
backwards from present effect to absent cause, or from the
present to the past. Thus, Holmes explains that ‘From a
drop of water.a logician could infer the possibility of an
Atlantic or a Niagara without having seen or heard of one
or the other.’ When Watson – unaware that Holmes wrote
the article – declares this to be nothing but ‘ineffable
twaddle’, Holmes explains that, on the contrary, this type
of reasoning has practical application in his work as a
‘consulting detective’.

Holmes and the historical sciences

Holmes’ description of his method of reasoning is similar
to that used in the ‘historical’ or ‘palaetiological’ sciences of
paleontology, archeology and geology, which by that time
had captured the imagination of the literate public. In one
of his popular lectures on science, Thomas H. Huxley
lauded the skill of Georges Cuvier, who had been able to
reconstruct ‘entire animals from a tooth or perhaps a
fragment of bone’ [1]. More recently, the comparative
anatomist Richard Owen (Figure 2) had been celebrated
for reconstructing an extinct bird from a six-inch long
piece of bone [2]. In the historical sciences, Huxley
explained, the scientist must ‘strive towards the recon-
struction in human imagination of events which have
vanished and ceased to be’ [3]. Using present clues – bone
fragments, fossils and geological strata – the scientist
reasons back to absent organisms and past time periods.
Figure 1. The first appearance of Arthur Conan Doyle’s ‘A Study in Scarlet’. The
Corresponding author: Laura J. Snyder (snyderl@stjohns.edu). story featured on the front cover of Beeton’s Christmas Annual in 1887. Image
Available online 7 August 2004 reproduced courtesy of The Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA.

www.sciencedirect.com 0160-9327/$ - see front matter Q 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.endeavour.2004.07.007
 Review Endeavour
Figure 2. Richard Owen (1804–1892). Image supplied by, and reproduced with
permission from, The Wellcome Library, London.
Holmes himself often demonstrates this ability. For
example, in the opening pages of The Hound of the
Baskervilles, Holmes treats Dr Mortimer’s walking stick
as a kind of fossil remain, using it to reconstruct an absent
(although, in this case, living) person.
Conan Doyle (Figure 3) was familiar with Huxley’s
work, referring to him in later years as one of the ‘chief
philosophers’ of the time [4]. But Conan Doyle had also
learned this method of reasoning first-hand while study-
ing medicine at Edinburgh. He famously reported that his
teacher Joseph Bell was the inspiration for Sherlock
Holmes. In a gramophone recording made towards the end
of his life, Conan Doyle explained that ‘I thought I would
try my hand at writing a story where the hero would treat
crime as Dr Bell treated disease.’ As Cuvier could
reconstruct the anatomy and environment of an animal
from fossilized remains, so could Bell reconstruct a
patient’s profession, hometown and past history from his
own initial observations of the patient’s dress, accent,
habits and symptoms. In an often-reported case, Bell
determined within moments of meeting a patient that he
had been recently discharged as a non-commissioned
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Vol.28 No.3 September 2004 105
Figure 3. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, from a portrait by Sidney Paget in 1897. Image
supplied by the National Portrait Gallery, London (www.npg.org.uk) and repro-
duced with permission of Charles Foley, on behalf of the Estate of Dame Jean
Conan Doyle.
officer from a Highland regiment stationed in Barbados.
‘You see, gentlemen’, he explained to his awed students,
‘the man was respectful, but did not remove his hat. They
do not in the army, but he would have learned civilian
ways had he been long discharged. He has an air of
authority and is obviously Scottish. As to Barbados, the
complaint is elephantiasis, which is West Indian and not
British’ [5]. In A Study in Scarlet, when Holmes first
meets Watson, he concludes that Watson has recently been
in Afghanistan by using the same kind of reasoning
backwards.
Rules to ‘interpret Nature’
Holmes also describes various ‘rules of deduction’ that he
uses in reasoning backwards. These rules reflect common
images of the work of Francis Bacon, the 17th-century
philosopher of science whose writings became extremely
popular in 19th-century Britain. Conan Doyle explicitly
signals his appropriation of Bacon’s method by having
Holmes remark in A Study in Scarlet that the detective
must reason as he does in order to ‘interpret Nature’, a
phrase famously used by Bacon in defining his own
inductive method. (Holmes’ characterization of this
method as ‘the science of deduction’ rather than ‘the
science of induction’ is consistent with common usage of
the term ‘deduction’ during the 19th century, when it was
often used as a synonym for the more general term
‘inference’).
One popular view of Bacon’s method was expressed by
T.B. Macaulay in an essay originally published in 1837 [6].
106 Review Endeavour Vol.28 No.3 September 2004
Macaulay’s interpretation suggested that Bacon’s method
required that facts be collected blindly, without any
possible theory in mind. Once these facts are collected,
the ‘interpreter’ of Nature plugs them into tables of
presence, absence and variation, and mechanically applies
eliminative induction. After this exclusion is performed,
what remains is the truth. In his autobiographical work
Through the Magic Door, Conan Doyle claims that
Macaulay’s Essays [6] were among his favorite reading
material when he was young; therefore, it is most probable
that he read Macaulay’s essay on Bacon.
A central aspect of Macaulay’s image of Bacon is
reflected in Holmes’ famous and often repeated claim
that ‘when you have excluded the impossible, whatever
remains, however improbable, must be the truth’ (‘The
Adventure of the Beryl Coronet’). The importance of
reaching a conclusion by eliminating all but one possibility
is noted in several of the works. For example, in ‘The
Adventure of the Blanched Soldier’, Holmes uses the
eliminative method to solve the mystery of the incarcera-
tion of Godfrey Emsworth by his family. Holmes realizes
that there are only three possible reasons for Godfrey’s
family to hide him as they have done. He eliminates the
first two alternatives, by seeing that they are inconsistent
with some of the facts of the case, and then concludes that
‘there remained the third possibility, into which, rare and
unlikely as it was, everything seemed to fit.’ Indeed, he
was right: the boy was thought to have leprosy, and he was
hidden to prevent his being sent to a leper home.
Holmes also expresses a view similar to Macaulay’s
reading of Bacon when he notes that facts must be
collected before theories are formed. ‘It is a capital
mistake’, Holmes remarks, ‘to theorize before one has
data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories,
instead of theories to suit facts’ (‘A Scandal in Bohemia’).
At times, he even suggests that the detective must
approach the facts with a tabula rasa, a mind completely
devoid of ideas or theories: ‘We approached the case.with
an absolutely blank mind, which is always an advantage.
We had formed no theories. We were simply there to
observe’ (‘The Adventure of the Cardboard Box’). In The
Hound of the Baskervilles, Watson is sent off to Devonshire
to report all the facts back to Holmes, who claims to be in
London synthesizing these facts into a theory. ‘I will not
bias your mind by suggesting theories or suspicions,
Watson.I wish you simply to report facts in the fullest
manner to me, and you can leave me to do the theorizing.’
However, an alternative image of Bacon’s method was
also popular during the 19th century, and is equally
reflected in Holmes’ ‘rules of deduction’. The polymath
William Whewell, among others, characterized Bacon’s
method in a more complex and accurate way [7]. This more
accurate reading of Bacon’s method recognized that Bacon
did not advocate the ‘blind’ collection of facts. Rather,
Bacon famously criticized the ‘men of experiment’ or the
‘empirics’ who collect facts blindly, like ants collect matter.
Bacon recognized that fact collection and theorizing occur
simultaneously to some extent. Holmes, too, often allows
this. Thus, for example, although Holmes tells Watson in
The Hound of the Baskervilles that he will remain in
London forming theories with the ‘blind’ facts Watson
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sends him, he is in fact in Devonshire collecting his own
facts and devising a theory at the same time.
Another way in which Holmes deviates from Macau-
lay’s image of Bacon is in the importance he gives to
imagination. Holmes often admonishes the inspectors of
Scotland Yard for lacking this quality. In terms of fact
collection, Holmes notes, they ‘lead the world for thor-
oughness and method’; yet they are often unsuccessful
because of their ‘occasional want of imaginative intuition’
(‘The Adventure of the Three Gables’). Importantly,
although he speaks of imagination, Holmes is not endor-
sing the use of guesswork to formulate a hypothesis. On
the contrary, Holmes asserts that ‘I never guess. It is a
shocking habit – destructive to the logical faculty’ (‘The
Sign of Four’). In The Hound of the Baskervilles, when Dr
Mortimer claims that ‘we are coming now rather into the
realm of guesswork’, Holmes corrects him: ‘Say, rather,
into the region where we balance probabilities and choose
the most likely. It is the scientific use of the imagination,
but we always have some material basis on which to start
our speculations.’ What he means by the ‘scientific use of
the imagination’ – a phrase popularized by John Tyndall
in an 1870 lecture – is not unfettered guesswork but
rather, as the reference to ‘balancing probabilities’ makes
clear, a series of inferences [8]. His ‘rapid deductions’
might be ‘as swift as intuitions’, but they are ‘always
founded on a logical basis’ (‘The Adventure of the Speckled
Band’). In The Hound of the Baskervilles, Holmes’
conclusion that the warning letter to Sir Henry was
composed in a hotel seemed to Mortimer to be guesswork,
but was actually based on observation and inference.
Holmes realizes that the address was written with a pen
that had run dry three times, indicating that there was
very little ink both in the pen and in the ink bottle. This
would have been common in hotel rooms, but not in the
private homes of the well educated, who would be the most
likely to cut words from The Times. Thus, the imaginative
intuition he chides the police for lacking seems to be a
creative aptitude for making logical inferences from the
facts.
These aspects of Holmes’ method resemble the image of
Bacon depicted by Whewell. As Whewell notes, Bacon
decisively rejects guesswork as a route to hypotheses. But
he also denies that mere eliminative inference is enough.
Rather, Bacon emphasizes that conclusions should be
reached by chains of inferences of various kinds. Although
Bacon, as characterized by Whewell, does not explicitly
indicate a role for ‘imagination’, he does describe one of the
necessary forms of reasoning as requiring ‘rather a
sagacity, and a kind of hunting by sense, than a science’
[9,10]. Although there is no direct evidence that Conan
Doyle read Whewell, he does seem to have been influenced
by the image of Bacon depicted by Whewell, as well as that
portrayed by Macaulay.
Holmes: the ‘father of scientific criminal detection’?
In A Study in Scarlet, Dr Watson first meets Holmes in a
laboratory, where Holmes has been experimenting on
bloodstains.
 Review Endeavour Vol.28 No.3 September 2004 107

I’ve found it! I’ve found it,’ he shouted to my companion,

running towards us with a test-tube in his hand. ‘I have
found a re-agent which is precipitated by haemoglobin,
and by nothing else.. [I]t is the most practical medico-
legal discovery for years. Don’t you see that it gives us an
infallible test for blood stains?.. [T]he old guaiacum test
was very clumsy and uncertain..Had this test been
invented, there are hundreds of men now walking the
earth who would long ago have paid the penalty of their
crimes..

It is often claimed that passages such as this presaged

the development of the modern science of forensics, and
therefore that Conan Doyle’s invention of Sherlock
Holmes is responsible for the origination of this science.
The criminologist Harry Ashton-Wolfe, in 1932, asserted
that ‘Many of the methods invented by Conan Doyle are
today in use in the scientific laboratories’ [11]. Sir Sidney
Smith, professor of Forensic Medicine at Edinburgh,
believed that ‘Conan Doyle had the rare, perhaps unique
distinction of seeing life become true to his fiction’,
referring specifically to Conan Doyle’s ‘anticipation of
modern scientific methods of investigation’ [12]. A more
recent writer has dubbed Sherlock Holmes the ‘father of
scientific crime detection’ [13,14] (Figure 4). However
appealing this claim might be to fans of Sherlock Holmes,
it seems that there is little evidence to support it.
Although the science of forensics was still relatively
young by the time the Sherlock Holmes stories were
written, it had already been developing many of the
procedures and tests that are often attributed to the
imagination of Conan Doyle. It is therefore more likely
that the new science of forensics was another influence
upon the creation of Conan Doyle’s scientific detective.
Let us examine, for example, the ‘infallible’ test for
bloodstains Holmes is presented as having ‘invented’. By
1887, when A Study in Scarlet was published, many Figure 4. This illustration of Sherlock Holmes depicts him with a magnifying glass,
researchers already shared the desire for such a test; this indicating his scientific approach to crime detection and was the frontispiece to the
first edition of ‘A Study in Scarlet’ (Illustration by D.H. Friston). Image reproduced
desire was not satisfied until the turn of the 20th century, courtesy of The Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA.
when the spectroscopic method was developed. A modern
chemist has noted that the method Holmes describes – one by doctors, lawyers and police officials throughout Europe;
which would precipitate a brownish dust and change the it was the first work of international renown on poisons.
color of blood in water to mahogany – would need an acid Even earlier, in 1806, a German researcher developed a
to increase the oxidation rate, as well as a material to be test for detecting the presence of arsenic in human organs;
oxidized. By examining the possibilities for the ‘few white by 1851, a method for detecting vegetable poisons had
crystals’ and the ‘drop of transparent fluid’ that Holmes been developed [18]. Before the first appearance of
uses, this chemist suggests that the ‘Sherlock Holmes test’ Holmes, Alphonse Bertillon had been studying the
would probably have had a sensitivity similar to the scientific examination of documents. He published a
guaiacum test that Holmes derides as being ‘clumsy and work on the topic in 1889 and, some years later, put out
uncertain’ [15]. Moreover, Holmes’ test does not dis- an article on the study of handwriting [19]. During the
tinguish between human blood and the blood of animals early years of the 19th century, the famous criminal
– a problem that, by 1887, was considered an even larger catcher Eugene Francois Vidocq had studied the shape
concern than the sensitivity of the blood tests currently in assumed by bloodstains as they fell, followed later by
use. A solution to this problem did not arise until the work Alexandre Lacassagne. In the second decade of the 19th
of Paul Uhlenhuth in 1901 [16]. century Vidocq was also responsible for one of the first
Holmes has also been credited with inventing methods recorded instances of taking plaster casts of footprints at a
of studying ‘poisons, hand-writing, stains, dust, footprints, crime scene. The shape and position of wounds had been
traces of wheels, the shape and position of wounds.’ [17]. detailed in Lacassagne’s 1878 Précis de medeciné [20].
But again, many of these studies had already been Other scientific forensic studies had also been undertaken
initiated by the time Sherlock Holmes appeared on the before the creation of Holmes. In 1870, Auguste Ambrose
scene. Matthieu Orfila’s 1813 Traité des poisons was used Tardieu published a treatise on the diagnosis of
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108 Review Endeavour Vol.28 No.3 September 2004
Figure 5. The front cover of November 1906 issue of Collier’s magazine, by F.D.
Steele. In ‘The Norwood Builder’, Sherlock Holmes discovers an attempt to use a
fraudulent fingerprint to frame an innocent man. Image supplied by, and
reproduced with permission of, The British Library (shelfmark A53).
strangulation, hanging and choking deaths [21]. By 1880,
Henry Faulds had suggested in a letter to Nature that
fingerprints could be used to identify criminals; a system
of fingerprint identification was established in Scotland
Yard by 1901 (five years before Holmes used a forged
thumbprint in the plot of “The Norwood Builder”)
(Figure 5) [22]. The first use of forensic ballistics in a
court case occurred in 1784, and several detailed studies of
ballistics were conducted during the second half of the
19th century [23]. Sherlock Holmes may have been the
first to write a ‘treatise on tobacco ash’ (A Study in Scarlet
and ‘The Sign of Four’), but his doing so reflected a spirit of
scientific inquiry that was already being applied to
criminal detection. Conan Doyle was exposed to this
research while in medical school; we know that he
attended lectures on crime and criminals by Sir Henry
Little-John, who was the Police Surgeon of Edinburgh as
well as the Professor of Medical Jurisprudence at the
university [24].
Conclusion
Rather than inventing forensic science, the Holmes stories
instead presented the ‘science of criminal detection’ in a
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positive light in Britain. This was particularly important
after the 1859 Smethurst case, in which a leading
toxicologist had been forced to admit that his earlier
findings of arsenic in the tissues of a dead woman – which
had led to the verdict that Thomas Smethurst was guilty
of murder by poisoning – had been mistaken. An
independent body of specialists later recommended the
acquittal of the alleged murderer. After this, forensic
science was viewed with suspicion by the British public for
half a century [25,26]. By creating a ‘scientific detective’
who could demonstrate the logical steps leading to his
invariably correct conclusions, Conan Doyle gave to the
public a criminal catcher they could trust. Thus, Sherlock
Holmes did not invent forensic science, but he probably
did more than any other person, fictional or not, to portray
it as a valuable tool in criminal detection.
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1 Huxley, T.H. (1896) On the method of Zadig. In Collected Essays
(Vol. IV), p. 18, D. Appleton (New York, NY, USA)
2 Rupke, N.A. (1994) Richard Owen, Victorian Naturalist, Yale
University Press pp. 346–414
3 Huxley (1896), p. 9
4 Conan Doyle, A. (1924) Memories and Adventures, Hodder and
Stoughton
5 Liebow, E. (1982) Dr. Joe Bell, Model for Sherlock Holmes, Bowling
Green University Popular Press
6 Macaulay, T.B. (1877) Lord Bacon. In Critical and Historical Essays:
Contributions to the Edinburgh Review, pp. 346–414, Longmans
Green (London, UK)
7 Whewell, W. (1857) Spedding’s complete edition of the works of Bacon.
In Edinburgh Review 106, 287–322
8 Tyndall, J. (1871) The scientific use of the imagination. In Fragments
of Science for Unscientific People: A Series of Detached Essays,
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9 Bacon, F. (1858–1861) The Works of Francis Bacon (Vol. 4)
(J. Spedding et al., eds.) Longmans, p. 421
10 Snyder, L.J. (1999) Renovating the Novum Organum: Bacon, Whewell
and Induction. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 30,
531–557
11 Cited in Berg, S.O. (1970) Sherlock Holmes, father of scientific crime
detection. The Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology and Police
Science 61, pp. 446–452 (op. cit. p. 446)
12 Smith, S. (1959) Mostly Murder, Harrap (Edinburgh, UK)
13 Berg, S.O. (1970), pp. 446–452
14 Nardon, P. (1967) Conan Doyle: A Biography, (Partridge, F. trans.),
Holt, Rinehart and Winston
15 Gerber, S.M. (1983) A study in scarlet: blood identification in 1875. In
Chemistry and Crime: From Sherlock Holmes to Today’s Courtroom
(Gerber, S.M. ed.), pp. 31–35, American Chemical Society (Columbus,
OH, USA)
16 Thorwald, J. (1965) The Century of the Detective (Winston, R. and
Winston, C. trans.), Harcourt, Brace and World
17 Cited in Berg, S.O. (1970), p. 446)
18 Thorwald, J. (1965), pp. 267–300
19 Rhodes, H.T.F. (1968) Alphonse Bertillon, Father of Scientific Detec-
tion, Greenwood (Westport, CT, USA), p. 126
20 Smyth, F. (1980) Cause of Death: The Story of Forensic Science, Van
Nostrand Reinhold, p. 146 and p. 184
21 Thorwald, J. (1965), p. 161
22 Cole, S.A. (2001) Suspect Identities: A History of Fingerprinting and
Criminal Investigation, Harvard University Press, pp. 73–94
23 See Smyth, F. (1980), pp. 72–75 and Thorwald, J. (1965), pp. 417–420
24 Jones, H.E. (1904) The original of Sherlock Holmes. Collier’s January
9, pp. 14–20
25 Smyth, F. (1980), pp. 25–26
26 Thorwarld, J. (1965), p. 177