The Autobiography of Sherlock Holmes (13 page)

29

My medical needs were provided for a number of years by Dr Moore Agar. Since his retirement in 1919, I have been attended by his son, Dr Morris Agar who took over his father’s Harley Street practice. Young Dr Agar has made a name for himself through his skill as a diagnostician. Where others are unable to reach a diagnosis in difficult cases, Dr Agar is requested as a consultant to establish the accurate and definitive diagnosis. He uses methods that are quite like my own in solving difficult problems: knowledge, observation and reasoning coupled with testing to reach one or more hypotheses which can be refined by careful questioning and investigation of the physical evidence.

While the state of my health was previously not a matter in which I took the slightest interest, there were several periods of physical exhaustion brought about by prolonged work that required complete rests to restore my usually strong constitution. In 1920, I spent a week aboard a Japanese freighter docked in the East End of London working as a cook while preparing my net for the captain, the poisoner Shigawa, who had used the venom of the Fugu Pufferfish to kill three Formosan emissaries to Great Britain negotiating support for a revolution against China. He introduced the venom into their soup during a dinner hosted by the Foreign Office. They died within four minutes. The Prime Minister requested that I bring the murderer into custody and assist in resolving the unfortunate embarrassment to the government.

During the miasmic week aboard the freighter, I contracted an unusual Asian malady from infected onions that struck me down within a five-day period of incubation. Dr Agar manipulated the symptoms and clues and isolated the insidious
Matsumato speagorea retarges
, a microscopic worm that invades the tissues of the heart after entering the body through the tear ducts and, in a week of astounding replication and growth, spreads millions of worms throughout the body via the bloodstream, blocking the capillary system, severely restricting the flow of oxygenated blood, and ultimately causing death from asphyxiation in ninety-five percent of the victims. The only possible treatment is the injection of the purified blood of the Carcassian centipede which contains high concentrations of caustic Steraemaniasis, a potent fulminator and the only known toxin to kill the
Matsumato
worm.

Dr Agar appealed to the Royal College of Physicians in Edinburgh and a sufficient quantity of the rare injectable Steraemaniasis was obtained from the only research laboratory in Great Britain with a supply in time to preserve my life. I was back to work in two months, albeit weakened from the disease and the treatment. Dr Agar has stated that the parasite can tunnel deep into the heart tissue and lie encapsulated and dormant for up to twelve years and, in a quarter of the victims, a second acute phase is experienced and is, invariably, fatal within days as further injections are ineffective.

Prior to the initial attack, however, I was able to complete my case and see the murderous Japanese freighter captain in the hands of Scotland Yard. He was remanded for trial, found guilty, was condemned and hanged the next day at Wormwood Scrubs and the affair quietly filed in the records of the Foreign Office which declined to become involved in the delicate and now Most Secret Formosa matter.

[Editor’s Note: At this point the manuscript of
Montague Notations
ends. Two small quarter-sheets of light blue paper in the same handwriting were found inserted between the final two leaves. One had the notation, “Dr Agar, half-two, 5 July inst.” The other, also in the same handwriting, contained a brief outline for four additional chapters, numbered 30 through 33. All attempts to locate Dr Agar’s appointment book containing his schedule for 5 July 1929 or his patient medical records have met with failure.]