Keeping the patients coming: Not so elementary, Watson.

Well, I thought the Swiss connection with Sherlock Holmes were the Reichenbach falls (I had to visit, a few years back). But no, I read that:

Except in Switzerland, where the stories were banned from railway bookstalls for fear they’d inspire criminality, Sherlock Holmes was big business from the moment of his inception.

But of more interest to the medic:

In 1882, as a newly qualified doctor with a practice in Southsea, Arthur Conan Doyle found himself chronically short of sick people. He therefore used the empty office hours to write his tales about the “consulting detective” who was based on Joseph Bell, the Edinburgh surgeon who knew at a glance what was wrong with the patients parading before him

There is a widespread delusion in the UK that you can accurately plan how many doctors you need. This is a mistake, both for society and for the doctors themselves. As we move forward, I think we will see more medics emulating one of the great ones.

And, as for the book, reviewed in the FT (‘The life and death of Sherlock Holmes’), it highlights that Holmes’ nemesis was not Moriarty, but lawyers.