Over the course of this year, I've written four short essays about Arthur Conan Doyle for inclusion in the Sherlock's Spotlight Gazette published
by The Beacon Society for young readers. As I finished work on the
final
essay for 2023, I decided to post the four to this site. Here is the third, a brief glimpse at part of Conan Doyle's life as a medical student.
Glimpses into the life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes
The Medical Student Makes His Way
Once Arthur Conan Doyle earned his Certificate of Honour from the University of London in 1875, the next step in his education was to enroll in university in Edinburgh upon a five-year course of medical study with the plan to graduate as a Bachelor of Medicine in the end. (He had no way of knowing then he would eventually become a very successful writer instead of a successful doctor.) Like many university students, he needed to earn money between school terms to help pay his tuition and living expenses. One way he did this was to find himself a position as a doctor’s assistant during the school breaks.
Arthur Conan Doyle at 22, graduating from Edinburgh University.
During his university years he served as an assistant in several different medical practices, sometimes in the countryside and sometimes in a city practice. The work required long hours with little to no pay. In the beginning, he worked for only room and board to gain experience. At the time, assistants most often lived in the doctor’s establishment, sleeping in shared quarters and eating with the other members of the practice and the doctor’s family.
He eventually served three different clerkships with Dr. Reginald Hoare. The time was, as Doyle called it, “before the days of motors;” therefore, Dr. Hoare and his helpers used five horses from early morning until late at night in Birmingham—a large city in the center of the West Midlands region of England. In addition to treating the many patients, in the doctor’s home offices and in the patient’s homes, the medical team had to create their own prescriptions, bottling and boxing them to send out, or deliver to, the many patients.
In his book Memories and Adventures, Doyle tells us, “I had long lists of prescriptions to make up every day, for we dispensed our own medicine, and one hundred bottles of an evening were not unknown. On the whole I made few mistakes, though I have been known to send out ointment and pill boxes with elaborate directions on the lid and nothing inside.”
He would draw on these experiences with Dr. Hoare many years later to write the fiction novel, The Stark Munro Letters. The book about a young doctor making his way describes the workday in practice such as the one in Birmingham. The day began with a quick breakfast at 9 in the morning and it ended at 10 at night, with very little time allowed to take a break in between. In addition to the 13-hour regular workday, it was not uncommon for the doctors to be called out in the night to make an emergency house call which “may take us two hours, or may take us ten.” It was a grueling schedule but, as Doyle noted, “I had no time to spend my money.” He was able to send his money home.
It was during his second year of clerkship that the idea that he might earn some money from writing stories first firmly took root. He took a chance—he penned an adventure story, “The Mystery of Sassassa Valley.” To his “great joy and surprise” it was accepted for publication by the Edinburgh magazine Chambers’s Journal and he received a small payment.
He was now only three years from finishing his medical education and only a few years from great success as a writer.
Sources:
Doyle, Arthur Conan. Memories and Adventures and The Stark Munro Letters. https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com. Accessed 7 July 2023.
Stashower, Daniel. Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle. Henry Holt and Company, Inc., 1999, pp. 29-30
Photo credits: https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php/A_Life_in_Pictures
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