ABSTRACT
The personality of Sherlock Holmes has excited so much interest that for years scholars in England and America have engaged in acute controversy on various points on which the text of the Holmes chronicles is obscure, deficient, or, apparently, contradictory. Was Holmes an Oxford or a Cambridge man? Was he dependent on his professional earnings? Did Watson marry one, two, or three wives? On these and similar questions the most learned authorities are at variance. No attempt has, however, yet been made, so far as I am aware, to examine a more important question: Can we accept Watson’s statements that Holmes was once a victim to the cocaine habit?
