A. Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes, and murder by tropical infection

The scientific insights with which A. Conan Doyle endowed his creation, the master detective Sherlock Holmes, continue to attract scholarly interest. Indeed, the clinical and/or scientific aspects of Doyle's fiction hold appeal for those interested in the epidemiology of tropical infectious diseases. The origins and routes of transmission of tropical infections were subjects of fruitful investigation in the latter half of the nineteenth century. In "The Adventure of the Dying Detective," Sherlock Holmes investigates a murder that he suspects to have resulted from a fatal Asiatic disease associated with a short incubation period: the indications point to primary septicemic plague as the murder weapon.