Doctors Who Write

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The original and still the champ, SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE created one of literature's most enduring characters: detective Sherlock Holmes. Doyle earned his medical degree from Edinburgh University in 1881 and began writing while practicing medicine in the town of Southsea. His first Sherlock Holmes novel, A Study in Scarlet, was published in 1887. Doyle introduced the medical arts into his stories in the person of Holmes's sidekick, the loyal Dr. John Watson, basing that character in part on his own experiences. Even after the huge success of his Sherlock Holmes myteries, Doyle served as a field doctor in the Boer War (1899-1902).