Meet the real-life Scottish surgeon who inspired Sherlock Holmes
Lindsey Fitzharris chats with Ars about her new book, Sleuth-Hound: The Case of the Real Sherlock Holmes .
Lindsey Fitzharris chats with Ars about her new book, Sleuth-Hound: The Case of the Real Sherlock Holmes .
The short version
- A noted science communicator with a fondness for the medically macabre, Fitzharris published a biography of Scottish surgical pioneer Joseph Lister, The Butchering Art , in 2017—a great, if occasionally grisly, read.
- She followed up with 2022’s The Facemaker: A Visionary Surgeon’s Battle to Mend the Disfigured Soldiers of World War I , about a WWI surgeon named Harold Gillies who rebuilt the faces of injured soldiers.
- Ars Technica: What drew you to writing an entire book about Joseph Bell?
What happened
Lindsey Fitzharris : I’ve known about Bell because I’m a medical historian and I knew that he was an inspiration for this character, but nobody had written a big commercial book on him. There was a book in 1982 by a guy named Ely Liebow.
Why it matters
So people in the Sherlockian world, they know a bit about Bell through him, but I really wanted to bring a medical history lens to it.
Summary by Nerd News Network. Read the full article at Ars Technica via the links above and below.