Studies in 20th Century Literature Volume 22 Issue 1 Special Issue: New Illnesses—Old Article 4 Problems, Old Illnesses—New Problems 1-1-1998 The Empire Bites Back: Sherlock Holmes as an Imperial Immune System Laura Otis Hofstra University Follow this and additional works at: https://newprairiepress.org/sttcl Part of the Cultural History Commons, and the Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies Commons This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License. Recommended Citation Otis, Laura (1998) "The Empire Bites Back: Sherlock Holmes as an Imperial Immune System," Studies in 20th Century Literature: Vol. 22: Iss. 1, Article 4. https://doi.org/10.4148/2334-4415.1433 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by New Prairie Press. It has been accepted for inclusion in Studies in 20th Century Literature by an authorized administrator of New Prairie Press. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. The Empire Bites Back: Sherlock Holmes as an Imperial Immune System Abstract Trained as a physician in the bacteriological age, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created a detective-hero who acts both like a masterful bacteriologist and an imperial immune system. Doyle's experiences as a doctor in South Africa taught him that the colonies' microbes were his Empire's worst enemy. In 1890, Doyle visited Berlin, where Robert Koch was testing a "cure" for tuberculosis, and in Doyle's subsequent character sketch of Koch, the scientist sounds remarkably like Sherlock Holmes. Based on Doyle's medical instructor Joe Bell, Holmes shares Koch's relentless drive to hunt down and unmask tiny invaders.