The Confabulannotated Sherlock Holmes, Chapter 2.10
Featuring gin, bedrest and Mickey Rourke
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Previously on my confabulannotations of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes mystery, The Hound of the Baskervilles: Some more details were provided on the death of Sir Charles Baskerville
And now, the story continues…
One Murphy, a gipsy1 horse-dealer, was on the moor at no great distance at the time, but he appears by his own confession to have been the worse for drink2. He declares that he heard cries but is unable to state from what direction they came3. No signs of violence were to be discovered upon Sir Charles’s person, and though the doctor’s evidence pointed to an almost incredible facial distortion4—so great that Dr. Mortimer refused at first to believe that it was indeed his friend and patient who lay before him5—it was explained that that is a symptom which is not unusual in cases of dyspnoea and death from cardiac exhaustion. This explanation was borne out by the postmortem examination, which showed long-standing organic disease6, and the coroner’s jury returned a verdict in accordance with the medical evidence. It is well that this is so, for it is obviously of the utmost importance that Sir Charles’s heir should settle at the Hall and continue the good work which has been so sadly interrupted. Had the prosaic finding of the coroner not finally put an end to the romantic stories7 which have been whispered in connection with the affair, it might have been difficult to find a tenant for Baskerville Hall. It is understood that the next of kin is Mr. Henry Baskerville, if he be still alive, the son of Sir Charles Baskerville’s younger brother8. The young man when last heard of was in America9, and inquiries are being instituted with a view to informing him of his good fortune10.”
gipsy adj To be tipsy specifically as a result of drinking gin
Told you so.
This induced spatial discombobulation is the major reason why, to this day, professional orienteers limit their consumption of gin during competition season.
Think early Jim Carrey. Or later Mickey Rourke.
Refusing to believe that a dead patient (or friend) was yours was a go-to tactic for physicians of the era. ‘Not my patient, not my malpractice suit’, as the saying went, particularly if the doctor in question was on his way to the opera or the theatre or a trial for an earlier malpractice suit for which they had been too tardy in summoning forth this defence.
Almost all ‘organic diseases’ of the time (eg tuberculosis, asthma, the gastric vapours) were believed to be a result of the patient standing upright for too long. Hence, the almost universal recommendation of bedrest as a cure.
It was considered proper for the family and friends of a recently deceased person to invent numerous lies about that person’s romantic and/or sexual prowess, particularly in the moments leading up to their demise. This was believed to ease the deceased’s way into Heaven on the basis that ‘God didnae want t’Devil tae hae a’ the heartthrobs!’. Coroners, in turn, had the unwelcome but rarely challenging duty of disproving these wildly embellished or, more commonly, wholly imaginary trysts.
These days, we would call him his ‘nephew’, but readers at the time tended to look askance at the so-called ‘diagonal relationships of the family tree’.
‘In America’ was a common euphemism for ‘suffering from a mental illness that causes one to lecture others in a voice that is too loud’.
Including the inheritance of the manor’s entire gin cabinet.