Sir Arthur Conan Doyle gave the world the iconic detective Sherlock Holmes, a character that has fueled endless novels, films and television series. Few realize that the detective’s keen powers of observation were modeled on a real person: Joseph Bell, a distinguished surgeon at the University of Edinburgh who taught Doyle while the author was a medical student. Bell’s story is now told in a lively new biography, Sleuth‑Hound: The Case of the Real Sherlock Holmes, written by medical historian Lindsey Fitzharris.
Fitzharris, known for her engaging science communication and a taste for the macabre side of medicine, first brought a historical surgeon to life with her 2017 book The Butchering Art, a biography of Scottish pioneer Joseph Lister that mixes rigorous research with vivid, sometimes grisly detail. She followed that success with The Facemaker: A Visionary Surgeon’s Battle to Mend the Disfigured Soldiers of World War I in 2022, a portrait of Harold Gillies, the WWI doctor who reconstructed the faces of badly injured soldiers.
In 2020, Fitzharris hosted the Smithsonian Channel documentary The Curious Life and Death Of…, which examined famous deaths ranging from drug lord Pablo Escobar to magician Harry Houdini. The program featured virtual autopsies, blood‑sample experiments, witness interviews and live demonstrations designed to uncover fresh insights into each case. Most recently, she and her husband, caricaturist Adrian Teal, released an illustrated children’s book titled Dead Ends! Flukes, Flops, and Failures that Sparked Medical Marvels, celebrating the accidental breakthroughs that have advanced medical science.