![]() He was a keen proponent of compulsory vaccination, for example, and was deeply interested in ophthalmology. While he struggled to make a living as a professional doctor, it is clear that Doyle was a highly intelligent man of science who was fully engaged in the medical debates of his time. He returned, therefore, to the University of Edinburgh, where he was awarded his MD in 1885, writing his dissertation on tabes dorsalis. (A decade later, he faced similarly bad luck when trying to set up a practice in London). Upon returning to England in 1882, he made two abortive attempts to set up a medical practice in Plymouth and Portsmouth, respectively. Photograph of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle by Walter Benington, 1914, via BBC Scotland His time aboard the Hope of Peterhead had presumably given him a taste for life on the open sea, however, and he soon put his master’s degree to good use by becoming the ship’s surgeon on the SS Mayumba on a voyage to the coast of West Africa. The following year, he graduated with a Bachelor of Medicine and a Master of Surgery from the University of Edinburgh. The likeness between the two was immediately obvious to fellow Edinburgh man of letters Robert Louis Stevenson, who was a friend of Bell.Ī year after these publications appeared, Doyle worked as a doctor on the Greenland Whaler Hope of Peterhead in 1880. He also famously based Sherlock Holmes on his Edinburgh university lecturer Joseph Bell. Thus, we can see how Doyle would later put his medical training to use in constructing murder mysteries for Holmes and Watson to solve. During that same year, he also published his first academic article, “Gelsemium as a Poison,” in the British Medical Journal. In addition, he wrote fiction as a medical student, with his first published story, “The Mystery of Sasassa Valley,” appearing in Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal in 1879. ![]() Though the Stella Matutina was also a Jesuit school, it was considerably less strict than his previous Lancashire schools had been, and it was here that he lost his faith and became an agnostic.Īfter leaving the Stella Matutina, Doyle enrolled at the University of Edinburgh Medical School, where he also studied botany at the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh alongside his medical degree. From here, he went on to Stonyhurst College (of which he had few happy memories) before leaving in 1875 to spend a year studying at the Stella Matutina in Fedlkirch, Austria, to improve his German language skills. He attended private Roman Catholic schools in England, the first being the Jesuit preparatory school in Stonyhurst, Lancashire, from 1868 to 1870. Three years later, the family was once again living together under one roof, though in vastly reduced circumstances, taking up residence in an Edinburgh tenement flat.ĭue to his father’s reduced circumstances and failing physical and mental health, Arthur Conan Doyle’s education was paid for by his comparatively affluent relatives. During this time, Arthur Conan Doyle stayed with the reformer Mary Burton, who was the aunt of a school friend. His father came from an artistic family and followed the family tradition, working as an artist and a civil servant, though his fame would come to be eclipsed by his son’s.īy 1864, however, the family’s fortunes were in disarray, and the Doyle family itself was scattered across Edinburgh due to Charles Altamont Doyle’s struggles with alcohol addiction. A Difficult Start: Doyle’s Early Life Photograph of a four-year-old Arthur Conan Doyle, via Conan Doyle CollectionĪrthur Ignatius Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on 22nd May 1859 to Mary Doyle (née Foley), an Irish Catholic, and Charles Altamont Doyle, who was born in England but was of Irish Catholic heritage. ![]()
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