Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Medical Career
1876 to 1882
In 1876, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle began his medical career studying at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. Here he met two professors who would later inspire his most famous protagonists. The character Professor George Edward Challenger was inspired by Professor Rutherford, an Assyrian man with a booming voice, broad chest, and thick beard. The character Sherlock Holmes was based on Dr. Joseph Bell, a Professor of Surgery, whose incredible deductive reasoning skills motivated Doyle to create a detective who used the same methods. It is during his medical studies that Doyle began writing short stories. His earliest surviving work of fiction, “The Haunted Grange of Goresthorpe,” was submitted to Blackwood’s Magazine, however, it was unsuccessful in achieving publication. “The Mystery of Sasassa Valley” was Doyle’s first published piece; it was published anonymously in Chamber’s Edinburgh Journal on September 6th, 1879. His first academic article, “Gelsemium as a Poison” was published in the British Medical Journal on September 20th, 1879. In 1880, during his studies, Doyle also worked as a medical assistant to help support his family financially. He graduated on October 22nd,1881 and enlisted as a doctor aboard a steamboat to Western Africa; the trip was extremely unpleasant, with Doyle falling severely ill in Lagos. A brief and unsuccessful partnership in 1882 pushed Doyle to open his own practice of ophthalmology in Southsea, England. This practice was too unsuccessful; with very little clientele, Doyle was left ample time to continue his fiction writing.
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