On December 27 we celebrate the birthday of Louis Pasteur who lived from 1822-1895. During those years he set the stage for many advances in the study of microbiology and infectious diseases. How does this impact on the Canon? In the narratives that are the subject of these discussions are contained many reference to infectious diseases. Most noteworthy, which shall be our story to be studied on that date, is The Adventure of the Dying Detective. You will recall that in this case Holmes pretended to be dying from a rare tropical disease, possibly "the black formosa corruption" or "tapanuli fever." By virtue of Dr. Watson's intervention, Mr. Holmes is able to do a "gotcha" on Culverton Smith, a Sumatra planter and expert on this illness. Mr. Smith was the individual who thought that he had tricked Sherlock Holmes into contracting this dread and incurable illness by sending him a boxed booby-trapped injection device. According to Baring-Gould, Mr. Hugh L'Tang's researches have identified this disease as a condition known as tsutsugamushi fever or scrub typhus. Effective antibiotic therapies for this rickettsial infection has been available for roughly 50 years. Thus, this disease is not incurable today; however, in the golden era of the Victorian age it was associated with a high degree of morbidity and mortality.

No doubt, the life of The Literary Agent had a great impact on Mr. Holmes' and Dr. Watson's interest in this subject. First of all, Arthur Conan Doyle received his Doctorate of Medicine with a thesis concerning the bacterial infection syphilis. His wife "Touie" died of tuberculosis after a lingering illness. Further, in May, 1892, a letter from Dr. Joseph Bell suggested a story idea for a "bacteriological criminal." In addition, it has often been suggested that Dr. Watson's first(?) wife, Mary, also died of tuberculosis. This was a century of great advances in the knowledge of infectious disease and microbiology in general: Jacob Lister led the way to aseptic surgery; Pasteur developed vaccines for anthrax and rabies; Koch worked out the pathogenesis of tuberculosis; and a discussion between Mr. Sherlock Holmes and Professor Paul Ehrlich in Montpellier in 1894 led to the latter's discovery of arsphenamine, the first antibacterial drug.

Also, 1899 was the year that the American Society for Microbiology (once known as the Society of American Bacteriologists), the largest single biological society in the U.S., was founded.