The Sign Of Four
In the beginning of the novel Dr. Watson says that he has seen Sherlock Holmes take cocaine three times a day for many months. Dr. Watson tells Holmes about the danger but Holmes disagrees and tells him that the drug relaxes and clears his mind. He uses cocaine due to no work.
A lady named Mary Morstan comes to talk to Holmes for a case which she assures him is unusual. Miss Morgan's father vanished some years before. He had got a twelve month notice from his Indian regiment and sent word to her to meet him at his hotel.Major Sholto was Mary Morstan only friend in London, the two had been in the same regiment together. Miss Morstan has now received a letter which urges her to meet with the personal sender that same night. The sender permits her to bring two friends as long as they are not cop related. She shows holmes a paper which she found with her father's things after his disappearance, the document appears to be a map and a sign with four crosses,below the sign are the words "The Sign of Four" along...
In Kate Summerscale’s book, The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher, we are introduced to a murder case at the Road Hill House in the late 19th century. The young child Saville Kent has been murdered and who murdered him is the question the entire town is interested in. All of the evidence we are introduced to points to Saville 's older, half sister, Constance Kent, as the murderer.
Cocaine is a classified ‘Schedule II’ drug, also known as “crack”, and “coke” it is a powerful drug, and addictive stimulant well known as a psychoactive substance. That comes from a plant called coca leaf that has been around since the mid-1800s and throughout the 20th century. “In the mid-1980s, addiction to the drug was seen as exaggerated or dismissed as psychological and not addiction” (Miller, Gold, Smith, 1997, p.62). In the past, cocaine’s original use was for medical purposes as local anesthetic for surgeries. Now its usage is illegal and this drug is immersed into the body through various ways. However,...
“The Sign of The Four” is a thrill riding book that has suspense hidden everywhere, especially through the cliff hangers at the end of the chapters. The whole chapter is building you up to this moment and it leaves you wanting to read even more. One example is when Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are approaching the house that holds the treasure and an unknown stranger said, “There was something strangely incongruous in this Oriental figure framed in the commonplace doorway of a third-rate suburban dwelling-house. ‘The Sahib awaits you,’ said he, and even as he spoke there came a high piping voice from some inner...
Grinspoon L, Bakalar JB (1981). Coca and cocaine as medicines: an historical review. J Ethnopharmacol. 1981 Mar-May; 3(2-3):149-59.
For some little time his eyes rested thoughtfully upon the sinewy forearm and wrist all dotted and scarred with innumerable puncture-marks” (Doyle 381). Doyle describes the process of Holmes using a needle to inject himself with drugs. Although there is a good chunk of text to read after that line, a very clear picture can be imagined of how frequent and seemingly painful the process is. When Watson was offered by Holmes to partake in drug use, he is described as being constitutionally frail due to his experience during the “Afghan campaign” (Doyle
The use of cocaine in the United States has declined over the last twenty years while the use of crack has increased. Many people avoided the use of crack because of the harmful chemicals used in creating the drug. One of the reasons why crack became popular is because of not needing to inject the drug hence less risks of being infected by the AIDS virus. Carroll (2000) states cocaine is the most powerful stimulant of natural origin. Most users snort or inject the drug to enable a quicker “high.” Cocaine use brings on many health problems. Fatal complications occur from regular use, for example, liver damage, seizures, elevated blood pressure causing stroke, heart failure, or heart attack.
Cocaine originated from South America, from coca leaves. Originally, the coca leaves were chewed by workers to decrease fatigue, improve endurance and have a greater resistance to the cold. This was to benefit the workers so they could work longer hours and be more productive. In 1855 the active ingredient in cocaine was isolated from the leaves, and in 1880 it was used as a local anesthetic (Nunes,2006). It was also used in coca cola. In 1855, coca cola was a soda beverage that contained sixty milligrams of cocaine for every eight ounces of the beverage. The idea behind this was to give people energy and a sense of well being (Nunes, 2006). By the late 1880s Sigmund Freud was using cocaine regularly and was even recommending it to others. This only lasted for less than twenty years, until he started discouraging it to others. Then by 1914 cocaine was banned for medical use and in beverages. This caused the use of cocaine and by the 1930s, the use had drastically decreased. It then became popular for recreational use in the 1980s (Nunes, 2006). It was often used and shown in movies such as Scarface, and is famous for the amount of cocaine that Al Pacino uses in one of the final scenes of the movie. Now it is still used recreationally and used by a ‘party crowd’. Although this is the primary category of people who use cocaine, people of all demographics use cocaine recreationally.
...he met the detective, fell victim to Moriarty’s games. “Moriarty is playing with your mind too. Can’t you see what’s going on!” (Sherlock). During Holmes’ last days before his faked suicide, he pleads with John to see reason through Jim’s manipulations, as does Desdemona with Othello’s accusations. Even Sherlock’s oldest friend Detective Inspector Greg Lestrade was doubting Holmes’ credibility.
There is one immensely popular figure in Victorian literature that uses scientific deduction to solve criminal mysteries, and his curiosity to solve mysteries has become his obsession. However, he is so cool and distant from his own emotions that he does not care if the obsession leads to his destruction, as long as he solves the mystery to appease his voracious mind first. The only thing that truly excites him in a passionate way, the one thing that causes any emotion within his cool demeanor, is his curiosity, which is his addiction, for solving mysteries. He is the hero of the story The Sign of Four, and his name, of course, is Sherlock Holmes.
In the short story “Signs and Symbols,” Vladmir Nabokov entices the reader with the story of a concerned elderly couple who visits their mentally unstable son on his birthday at the sanitarium. This visit is further complicated by the son’s attempt to take his life, which compels the hospital staff at the sanitarium to prevent the parents from meeting their son. This circumstance then embarks on the difficult journey that life has been for this mother and father of their mentally deranged child. Nabokov provides a touching story to his readers and does this through: the illustration of the characters, the setting, and keeps the readers interest by presenting the story in a suspenseful way that it leaves the reader thirsting for more.
As a reader, one can overlook “the detective’s social abnormality only because these are attached to individuals we take to be normal” (Gregoriou 25) as well as Watson’s adoration for Holmes pores through the narration and binds the reader.
Cocaine can be snorted, smoked, injected or even chewed; it can be consumed in any way as long as it ends up in the blood stream. It is a stimulant drug, meaning the messages travelling between the brain and body speed up. Cocaine affects the production, uptake and breaking down of three chemicals that naturally take place in the brain. These are: Dopamine, Serotonin and Norepinephrine. ...
For Sherlock Holmes, his partner in crime is Dr. John H. Watson. Not only is he a trusted friend, but also he is Holmes’ associate and the first person narrator of the Sherlock tales. The stories of Sherlock Holmes are a collection of short stories and fictional novels created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. These stories are based on a famous and most notorious detective all throughout London, Sherlock Holmes. Along his side, Dr. Watson narrates his and Holmes’ detective cases and reveals Sherlock’s abilities and knowledge of solving cases and fighting deadly crimes. For the duration of the stories, Watson and Holmes share a particular relationship where Holmes verbally dominates Watson, “You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is very clear” (Doyle 241). When he isn’t insulting Dr. Watson he talks about how much he relies on his partner, “I am lost without my Boswell” (Doyle 243).
“The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes,” states Sherlock Holmes (Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles loc 1238). According to TV Tropes, mystery is a genre of fiction where the plot revolves a mysterious happening that acts as the driving question. With any given problem there is a solution; however, and the question is “how does one come about to that solution”? Extremely high intelligence level, keen observation, creative imagination and sensitivity to details are just some of the qualities that Holmes possesses. In the process of solving mysteries, there is always a borderline between mere guessing, a coincidence, and a scientific approach that Holmes calls deductive reasoning. In Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's 1902 novel, The Hound of the Baskervilles, Dr. Mortimer seeks advice from Holmes as he explains the curse that has been plaguing the Baskerville family. With the power of deduction, Holmes realizes that Mr. Stapleton is actually a Baskerville descendant and has been planning to get rid of the other members of the family to claim the family fortune. Conan Doyle tells the reader what their mind is capable of doing by incorporating Holmes through his novels as he uses observation, deduction and knowledge in solving his cases. One important key that makes him different from most people is that he sees everything that people often neglect to pay attention to. A remarkable proof which shows that Holmes holds an extraordinary analytical mind and is uniquely capable of solving a mystery through his great sensitivity to minute details and the ability to draw connections from it was shown as he observes and deduces information from the letter received by Sir Henry Baskerville the moment he arrived...
James Kissane and John M. Kissane, “Sherlock Holmes and the Ritual of Reason”, in Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Vol.17, NO.4, March 1963, pp.353-62.