Conan Doyle as a Medical Student
The Medical Conan Doyle II. Conan Doyle as a Medical Student: "One of the ruck" — or better? is an article written by Alvin E. Rodin & Jack D. Key published in the A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society (Vol. 1, No. 3) in september 1990.
The article reassesses Arthur Conan Doyle's performance as a medical student, challenging the claim that he was merely "one of the ruck" by examining grades, prizes, and published research. It shows that despite financial hardship and uneven marks, Conan Doyle demonstrated solid competence, early clinical skill, and notable academic distinction for his circumstances.
Conan Doyle as a Medical Student
Conan Doyle's academic reputation as a medical student leaves much to be desired. He stated in his autobiography, from the vantage point of 43 years later, that:
"I was always one of the ruck, neither lingering nor gaining — a 60 per cent man at examinations."
(1)
This statement has been generally taken in its worst connotation with further extrapolations. For example, Accardo has recently written that:
- ... he lackadaisically matriculated there [Edinburgh]: and that... literature's gain [from medicine] probably saved many lives. (2)
Such statements are not based on any primary source research, but follow the prevailing innuendoes that Conan Doyle was inferior in all matters medical.
There is, however, considerable evidence that Conan Doyle was, indeed, a quite successful student of medicine. This is evidenced by the medical publications during and within a few years of his graduation. In the year of his first short story, 1879, this third year medical student published, in the prestigious British Medical Journal, an account of his self experimentation with the drug gelseminum, (3) a substance used for neuralgia from which Conan Doyle suffered. He took increasing daily doses to "ascertain how far one might go with the drug", — carefully recording the side effects, and stopping only when they became very severe after seven days. In 1882, one year after graduation, he described in The Lancet a patient in whom he diagnosed leukaemia by microscopic examination. (4)
A later article in The Lancet of 1884 presented Conan Doyle's suggestions that gout was the cause of symptoms in three generations of a family which he had examined — a grandfather with joint disease, his son with psoriasis, and his granddaughter with eye disease (5) — an association well-recognised today. Four years after graduation, Conan Doyle was granted a post-graduate degree for an excellent thesis on tabes dorsalis, a syphilitic disease. (6) These are certainly not the fruits of a lackadaisical medical student. But myths die hard, especially derogatory ones. In contradistinction to such untruths, are specific grades and prizes obtained by Conan Doyle while a medical student at the University of Edinburgh.
From 1878 to 1881, Conan Doyle obtained S (satisfactory) grades in Chemistry, Anatomy, Institutes of Medicine, Surgery, Midwifery, Medical Jurisprudence and Clinical Medicine. (7) His only lower grade was an S- in clinical surgery. In a letter to one of his mentors, Dr. Reginald Hoare of Birmingham, (8) he explained that:
The surgery oral was a beastly exam. Spence [Professor of Surgery]... told me to lay out the instruments for lithotomy [removal of a stone] from a tray — I did it — He came prancing towards me... "Wouldn't I need an Artery forceps!"... I remarked "I didn't lay it out, sir, because you forgot to put one in the tray" — I had him there.
And Conan Doyle also had his S- in Clinical Surgery.
The eight grades mentioned above could be indicative of one of the ruck, a 60 per cent man at examinations, but six grades higher than Satisfactory were also awarded: An S+ (better than average) was obtained in Botany, Natural History and Pathology; more impressive are B grades (much better than average) received in Chemical Testing, Materia Medica and Practice of Physic. Thus, grades in 42.9% of his medical school examinations were greater than satisfactory! As a reflection of this achievement, Conan Doyle is listed three times for one year within the section on "Class Prize Lists" in The Edinburgh University Calendar of 1879-80 (9). He received a first class honours certificate in General Pathology, and second class honours in Materia Medica and in Therapeutics. Only the latter grade was near the 60% level, being 59%. The other two were, respectively, 78% and 71%.
Conan Doyle's academic achievements are all the more noteworthy because of his financial difficulties. As indicated in his autobiography (1):
I endeavoured almost from the first to compress the classes for a year into half a year, and so to have some months in which to earn a little money as a medical assistant...
He did this three times and, in addition, also spent seven months as a ship's surgeon on the Arctic whaler Hope. His pecuniary needs prolonged his medical school experience from four to five years and, without such interruptions and distractions from his medical education, Conan Doyle might well have been a consistent A or B medical student throughout.
References
1. Doyle, A. C.: Memories and Adventures: Hodder & Stoughton, 1924, p. 27
2. Accardo, P.: Diagnosis and Detection. The Medical Iconography of Sherlock Holmes: Cranbury, N.J., Associated U. Press, 1987
3. Doyle, A. C.: Gelseminium as a Poison: Brit Med J: 2:483, 1897
4. Doyle, A. C.: Notes on a Case of Leucocythemia: Lancet: 1:490, 1882
5. Doyle, A. C.: The Remote Effects of Gout: Lancet: 978-979, 1884
6. Doyle, A. C.: An Essay Upon the Vasomotor Changes in Tabes Dorsalis and on the Influence Which is Exerted by the Sympathetic Nervous System in that Disease: Unpublished Thesis, U. of Edinburgh, April 1885
7. Transcript: Arthur Conan Doyle: University of Edinburgh, 1877-1881
8. Doyle, A. C.: Letters to Dr. Reginald Hoare and Family: in Berg Collection, N.Y. Public Library, N.4, Folio 5, Edinburgh, 1881
9. The Edinburgh University Calendar 1879-80: Edinburgh, James Thin, 1879
- Article courtesy Christopher Roden, founder of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society (1989-2003).
