79. Sleuth-Hound, with Lindsey Fitzharris

 

Hello and welcome to Episode 79. This time, we are delighted to welcome to the podcast Dr Lindsey Fitzharris to talk about her new book Sleuth-Hound, a whirlwind tour of Victorian forensics featuring the inspiration for Sherlock Holmes, Joseph Bell.

About Lindsey Fitzharris

Dr. Lindsey Fitzharris is a New York Times bestselling author and medical historian with a PhD from the University of Oxford. She is known for bringing the grisly, surprising, and deeply human history of medicine to life. Her debut book, The Butchering Art (2017), a celebrated account of Victorian surgery, won multiple literary awards, earned international acclaim, and has been translated into 20 languages. Her follow-up book, The Facemaker (2022), is about pioneering First World War surgeon Harold Gillies. Lindseyis also a children's author, collaborating with her husband, Adrian Teal—head caricaturist for the hit TV series, Spitting Image—to bring the wonders of medical history to young readers. Her new book, Sleuth-Hound, is a whirlwind tour of Victorian forensics from the perspective of the medical detective, Joseph Bell, whose methods and razor-sharp logic inspired the creation of Baker Street’s famous resident: Sherlock Holmes.

Also by Lindsey:

The Butchering Art (2017)

The Facemaker (2022)

Sleuth-Hound (Allen Lane, 2026)

Edinburgh, 1878. A medical student named Arthur Conan Doyle squeezes into the Royal Infirmary’s packed operating theatre, hoping to catch a glimpse of the celebrated professor whose uncanny powers of observation blur the line between diagnosis and detective work.

That professor was Joseph Bell, who became one of the most celebrated surgeons and medical reformers of his age. With a flair for the theatrical and an eye for clues hidden in the tiniest details, he astonished his students with lightning-fast deductions about his patients’ backgrounds and ailments. Together with Edinburgh’s chief police surgeon, Henry Duncan Littlejohn, Bell also investigated some of the highest-profile murders of the century, including those of Jack the Ripper, and collaborated with forensic specialists such as a ballistics expert named Dr. Watson. And as Conan Doyle’s mentor, Bell inspired the creation of literature’s most iconic sleuth: Sherlock Holmes.

International bestselling author Lindsey Fitzharris guides us through the smog-choked alleys and crowded slums of Victorian Edinburgh to tell the compelling, untold story of the birth of modern forensic science through the life of its most charismatic figure. 

[From the publisher: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/453146/sleuth-hound-by-fitzharris-lindsey/9780241632611]

Acknowledgements 

Thanks to our sponsor, Belanger Books (www.belangerbooks.com), and our supporters on Patreon and Paypal.

Image credits: Thanks to Alexis Barquin at The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopaedia for permission to reproduce these images. Please support the encyclopaedia at www.arthur-conan-doyle.com.

Music credit: Sneaky Snitch Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ 

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