Dear Sherlockians,
It is really heartening to see all those new
members joining the Sherlock Holmes Society of India (International)! Sumal has
already extended his ‘official’ welcoming; I merely second it – Welcome to the
SHSOI (I)!

As for Holmes’s addiction, as Sumal has mentioned
in his latest e-mail, the debate started as soon as it was mentioned about in
the very first sentence of “The Sign of Four”. I do not know why, but most of
the great artists – Holmes I consider to be one too – have some sort of
addiction or the other: alcohol, music, women, arms, and so on. Possibly, they
use it as a source of wilful distraction from the general concerns of mundane
life. And Holmes, it seems to me, remains separated from commonness!

In his study of the usage of narcotics on the
English soil, Julian Wolff has traced the beginning of the practice of injecting
cocaine to 1884, started by the American physician William Halsted. It has had
been comparatively a newer phenomenon, therefore, when Holmes ‘takes up the
habit’. What is, however, interesting is that we cannot, in the background of
the 1880s and the 1890s, call Holmes a ‘drug addict’! In “In the Footsteps of
Sherlock Holmes” (London: Cassell and Company, 1958), Michael Harrison informs
that the purchase of even the Schedule IV drugs was legal in late 19th century
England, and people could freely purchase such narcotics as arsenic, cocaine,
and laudanum. About the seven per cent solution of cocaine, “The Sign of Four”
contains the only reference to Holmes’s usage of the drug. F.A.Allen, in
“Devilish Drugs, Part One”, published in the Autumn 1957-edition of ‘The
Sherlock Holmes Journal’ (Vol. III, No. 3, pp. 12-14),
writes that Holmes’s usage of the drug ‘three times a day’ is ‘disturbing’, but
the seven per cent rate is not fatal. The amount fixed in English medical
practice in 1898 was ‘ten per cent’, and probably the detective was trying to
cut down his intake rate. However, in the later stories, Holmes appears to have
had significantly ‘toned down’ his addiction. I have, therefore, reservations in
readily identifying the sleuth as a ‘drug addict’; I would, rather, go for the
‘drug taker’.

I am waiting for the other esteemed Sherlockians to register their views on
this.

It is Biswakarma Pooja in Bengal today. We are all set to worship the god of
metal and machines. Greetings for that!

Thanking you,

Yours sincerely,

(Pinaki Roy)















From:

Dr. Pinaki Roy,
C/o. M/s. New Niramay Clinic,
880, Hili More, Narayanpur,
Post Office: Balurghat – 733 101,
District: Dakshin Dinajpur,
West Bengal


---------------------------------
Stay in the know. Pulse on the new Yahoo.com. Check it out.

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]