In the evening of a foggy November day in 1913, Sherlock Holmes lay in his bed. He appeared to be dying of a fatal disease. He looked sick, febrile and had a flushed face. The setting is his house at Baker Street in London, and he calls Dr. Watson for help. Holmes instructs Watson not to come near him because the illness is highly infectious.
However, all is well and solved in the end. It turned out that Holmes had only pretended to get a dangerous illness- and that a mad scientist, Culverton Smith - had tried to kill Holmes using a deadly organism causing a deadly disease. Well, what is the organism that Holmes escaped from? And what was the disease in question? Medicine is full of amateur and professional literary experts, and a medical journal recently analysing this work of fiction, assessed the symptoms, and reached a conclusion- that the organism described could have been-…
