SHERLOCK HOLMES

The fictional detective Sherlock Holmes was based on a real-life Scottish surgeon, Joseph Bell. The character's creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, was an understudy of Dr. Bell at the University of Edinburgh Medical School in 1877 and was later his assistant. Upon meeting a patient Bell could by power of observation and deduction instantly determine the person's medical condition without examination or questioning. He would often guess with startling accuracy the patients' habits, occupations, nationalities and sometimes even their names. Sir Arthur noted: "Dr. Bell would sit in his receiving room ... and diagnose the people as they came in, before they even opened their mouths. He would tell them details of their past life; and hardly would he ever make a mistake." [Source: Biography magazine, "Bioscope: Fact or Fiction," December 2001]