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The young doctor got to his feet. Surveying his audience of 250 people he began his lecture. Titled ‘The Arctic Seas‘, it was one of a series of lectures that was put on by the Portsmouth Literary and Scientific Society.

When we think of Sherlock Holmes we tend to place him in Victorian London. Seeing a client in his rooms in Baker Street. Then setting off later in a hansom cab with Doctor Watson, as another case unfolds. However, Holmes and Watson also ventured further afield. In a pre-car society their mode of transport was of necessity by railway.

The Disintegration Machine is the last of the Professor Challenger stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The Disintegration Machine is not just another tale of scientific marvel. Instead, it is more unsettling than that, and deeply aware of the consequences of invention.

Think of dogs and Sherlock Holmes and the Hound of the Baskervilles usually springs to mind. However, a number of other canines also feature in the Holmes Canon.

One day in 1871, Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a letter to his father. Part of it read as follows: “You remember that little picture of St Michael’s Mount with Sir Kennelworth on it which you drew in my little red book. Well! The Fathers say it is a most wonderful work of art and have taken it from me they are so delighted with it.“ 

Was Sherlock Holmes an angler? There is possibly an answer to that question in the story "The Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place".

“You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive.“ Thus is Doctor Watson baffled for the first time by the deductive powers of Sherlock Holmes. It occurs during their initial meeting in A Study in Scarlet.

“Poe is, to my mind the supreme original short story writer of all time. His brain was like a seed-pod full of seeds which flew carelessly around, and from which have sprung nearly all our modern types of story.“ 

“The room was so filled with smoke that the light of the lamp upon the table was blurred by it…the acrid fumes of strong coarse tobacco took me by the throat and set me coughing. Through the haze I had a vague vision of Holmes in his dressing-gown coiled up in an armchair with his black clay pipe between his lips.“

A rather unusual letter was published in the British Medical Journal of 20 September, 1879. The author of the letter was a young medical student named Arthur Conan Doyle. Published under the title of Gelseminum As A Poison, it detailed Doyle’s experiments with the drug.