Detective novels were a new writing style, in relation with economic context and miserable life conditions. The first author was Edgar Poe, whose book Murders in the rue Morgue, became famous. In the story, Dupin Chevalier solves lots of mysterious situations only by logic thinking and mathematics reasoning. In relation with this character, we can consider he is Conan Doyle's ancestor.
Among his novels, Conan Doyle (1859-1930) presents Sherlock Holmes as a specialist of mathematic reasoning: this is the way he works to investigations he must lead. By the way, the author didn’t appreciate his hero: he was always seen in a bad mood.
After medical studies, he had some financial difficulties as his wife was suffering from tuberculosis and the family had no money. He decided to write novels and the second one (A Study in Scarlet – 1887- ) was edited after many negotiations. He tried to write historic novels, poetic stories and political articles.
The world of Sherlock Holmes is very interesting: Sherlock can be analyzed as a very intelligent but alcoholic as hero obsessed with cocaine. It is a pity because Sherlock Holmes is described as tall and athletic, very clever and brilliant. His medical studies help him to imagine crimes and detective stories as Conan Doyle knew so many things about drugs and chemical.
Also he plays the violin very well. These qualities were more from his brother, a young slim and athletic man. It is still fuzzy about his declaration directed to the professor Joseph Bell explaining that his character was really a huge source of inspiration. So much that he wrote “it is certainly thanks to you that Sherlock Holmes was born. Around a core of deduction and observation that I heard you tried to teach, I tried to build a new man.” In his characters, there is also Watson, a doctor who looks like Conan Doyle's mother, for a sake of making the present part of the recite. She had delighted his childhood by telling wonderful stories, even those undertaken by Watson there to tell. Contemporary life flocking to him through the poorly attached windows of the 221b and then the 10 Baker Street. Events were more or less important and reflected in the adventures of Sherlock Holmes crossed the Victorian era and Edwardian the twentieth century and finally the First World War. His novels and short stories featuring the famous detective were all published between 1887 and 1930 in an English newspaper First, the Strand and then to the United States and finally almost internationally. Specifically, at this time that these newspaper subscriptions significantly augmented. In 1889, J. Marshall Stoddart, American publisher started to be interested in him. He did meet Oscar Wilde and make him publish in the U.S., where he soon became famous. In 1891, the Strand published Sherlock Holmes stories permanently. In the illustrated version, the designer was inspired by his own brother for Holmes. It was an international success. As in the myth Sherlock Holmes’ spreads, Conan Doyle developed a phobia towards his character, his personal life is very disturbed, especially by the huge postbag he daily received, readers loved this character, proposed investigation ridiculous, jokes to his account, the author exceeded by his work, he went on to say: "I will kill him or he will kill me." Against all odds he decided to make Holmes fall off a cliff in the Final Problem in December 1893 in a duel in Switzerland. The reaction of the public does not expect twenty thousands subscribtion were terminated at the Strand. In August 1901, Doyle wrote a novel where it was missing a main character, he decided, far from him to resurrect, to present the detective in a new adventure but before his death. This is how The Hound of the Baskerville was born. Finally in September 1903, he decided to resume his writing, no longer resisting pressure from particular financial publishers. He did not resist the offer of a weekly American paper that proposed him $ 45,000 on the condition that Holmes resurrected. After two months of waiting, Empty House was published. "Relations" between the author and his character are still conflicting. Not attributing any value on the detective to his idea of a literary work, it nevertheless recounts the adventures of Holmes until 1928, just a year and a few months before his death. In the novels, Sherlock Holmes is part of the precursors of forensic medicine. Based on the quasi-infallibility of his observation, his analytical reasoning, Sherlock Holmes has the art of talk clues making using techniques drawing real criminals for example, blood tests. We do see in Study in Red, the second really important book by Conan Doyle, the evolution more or less described in the detection of blood. At the beginning of story, Sherlock Holmes shows his latest discovery, which is the replacement of guaiacum, former experience as unsafe coarse hydrogen peroxide. It, the appearance of pure water and reveals presence of blood just with a proportion of less than a millionth. However, we can't demonstrate the parallelism found between chemical changes and those of the detective. Indeed, the scientific method through research of the identification of people allowed the first branch of forensic science reveal traces of blood cleared by the perpetrator or the time. The pioneer in Europe was Mathieu Orfila (1787-1853) French physician and chemist who developed the first test to identify blood and was also the first to use the microscope to detect traces of biological origin such as blood. Then the German Christian Schönbein (1799-1868) observed the ability of hemoglobin to foam hydrogen peroxid water in 1863.
This is an experience to detect traces eventually made by a suspect on clothes:
The equipment required is as follows: oxygenated water, a dropper, a piece of cotton cloth, a blood sample collected on a steak.
Protocol: Dilute a few drops of blood in a little water. Soak a cloth about 20X20 in the diluted blood, wring and drop about a quarter. Wash it with water to remove the red marks. Allow the cloth, for example by placing it on a radiator. After drying, put the dropper with the drop of hydrogen peroxide in some parts of the cloth.
Observation: we note that effervescence forming a white drop appears in places where hemoglobin is still attached to the tissue.
We'll see what happened in the next part, but to conclude this experience, we will notify in sum great presumption traces of blood, due to the formation of foam. This test is very sensitive but unreliable. It is no longer used as much more sensitive and specific are available today, we will focus on them later.
