I went to see Sherlock Holmes and it dawned on me just how popular that guy is. Movies. Plays. Netflix...it never ends. But what do you know about the author of the original books, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle? I bet, like me, you don’t know too much about the guy. It turns out that he was pretty interesting.

  Doyle was a doctor. (big surprise to me!) He went to medical school and later studied ophthalmology. It is said that one of his teachers, Dr Joseph Bell, inspired his Sherlock Holmes character and it was during medical school that Arthur Conan Doyle started writing short stories and introduced Holmes as a detective. His dual careers continued--one career flourished and he became world famous as an author. And the other career? Doyle decided to stop practicing medicine after a serious bout of influenza helped him clarify his future path. But--if I was a psychoanalyst…I would say that he put his medicine career on the back burner when Sherlock came into existence. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the good Doctor Watson was the side-kick and not the primary investigator. ​

  Despite how successful the Sherlock Holmes series was, Doyle grew tired of the detective. He wanted to write more important, impressive work but his fans (and his own mother) did not agree with his decision. Shortly after killing the famous detective at Reichenbach Falls, readers of his works starting wearing black bands on their sleeves in mourning for the imaginary character. A distressed fan attacked Doyle with her purse. On the whole, it was an unpopular decision which he remedied by producing a new series, also staring Holmes, that was supposed to have occurred earlier in the detective’s career.

  Did you know that Doyle used his detective skills to help solve real mysteries? His investigation led to the release to two men who were accused of different crimes. You can google: George Edalji for an interesting story of one of his cases.

  Lastly, the part for which he’s become my personal hero.

  He was vocal against the anti-vaxxers, who he called anti-vaccinationists. I thought that the opposition to vaccines was a new problem, but that is clearly not the case. Harriet Hall MD, in her blog, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on Vaccination, came across letters that Doyle wrote for a newspaper in 1887. At that time the only vaccine available was for small pox—for which the risk of death from infection was 30%! Multitudes of survivors were left permanently scarred or blinded. ​Thank God that's gone!

  Here are my favorite sections of her blog:

  In the letters, he is responding to a Colonel Wintle, who objects to vaccination “upon two points: its immorality and its inefficiency or positive harmfulness.” Conan Doyle says “an enormous responsibility rests with the men whose notion of progress is to revert to the condition of things which existed in the dark ages before the dawn of medical science.”

If you practice medicine, maybe you’ve seen this too:

He says, “As to the serious effects of vaccination which Colonel Wintle describes as indescribable, they are to a very large extent imaginary … Some parents have an amusing habit of ascribing anything which happens to their children, from the whooping-cough to a broken leg, to the effects of their vaccination.”


  I almost forgot to tell you about Holmes and Watson. It was great! Fabulous acting, lots of melodrama, several surprises at the end! It’s playing at the Stage West theater in Ft Worth. You should see it!

Here’s the link. ​

​

  I didn’t hear the answer. Instead of grandpa sliding over to allow dad to sit down too, he got up and walked away from the table. I watched as he headed toward the exit. When I looked back at the table, I realized that I had seriously misinterpreted the situation...

  The two boys were glued together on the bench, shoulders smashed against each other. Their twin gazes followed that man…obviously not their grandfather…as he left. Instead of smiling like the stranger had, their faces were serious and their eyes anxious. In fact, they looked scared.  HOW COULD I HAVE MISSED THAT?

  Within a few minutes of dad appearing on the scene, they were all joking. I remembered that when the stranger had been sitting, the man had done all the talking and the boys had not opened their mouths. Within minutes, the boys were mimicking the way their father held his pizza (folded) and trying to shove each other off the bench. Everything was normal again but I was disturbed.

  Why didn’t I pick up on the fact that the boys didn’t feel safe? Their body language practically screamed they were nervous.

  An article by Drew, Vo and Wolfe In Psychol. Science (2013), helped me to understand what happened. They reported that:

The tendency to let expectation be our guide can cause even those of us who are intelligent, experienced, and well-trained to overlook some startlingly obvious things.

  Researchers have called this confirmation bias. We actively seek out and accept information that agrees with our preconceptions. The stranger’s shirt looked like my husband’s so he must’ve been a nice guy. Our brains will discount information that does not match up with our beliefs therefore I didn’t register their unease until after the stranger was gone.

  Have you ever had any thing like this happen to you? There’s a rather famous experiment called The Monkey Business Illusion. You can find it here. You might want to try to test your own powers of observation.

  And here’s a study of what happened when they hid the image of a gorilla in a CT scan. 83% of the radiologist missed seeing it!

  Studies on are brain show that often, we see what we expect to see, despite the evidence around us. In other words, believing is seeing, instead of the reverse.

Fast forward to last weekend when I was was visiting the Smithsonian museums again. I was enjoying the experience, reading the informative descriptions and admiring the curated works. Beside me, a man approached a display case, pumped his fist in the air and called out, “You lied, Darwin.”

  Here was the problem.

  I wasn’t at the National Museum of Natural History, I was at the new National Museum of African-American History and Culture.
​
  The display didn’t not mention Darwin. I know because I’d just walked past it. I didn’t pay too much attention because the title was something like “…proved the African-American was not inferior to the white race.” It wasn't exactly earth-shaking news to me.
  But this man was transfixed by the exhibit and he was very angry at a man who’d been dead for 137 years. So while my husband walked through the rest of the exhibits, mostly on athletes, I snuck off to find out what this stranger had against Darwin.
  I have to tell you, I’m disappointed in what I discovered. ​

  First, let’s start with the title of the book as I learned it: The Origin of Species

  The original title was: On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life. That second part was dropped in later editions.

  The book taught that natural selection, those better adapted to their environment (stronger, faster, bear more children) will be selected out by nature and have an increased survival rate. That's the part I remember but Darwin also had some specific ideas about race that were never mentioned to me in school. (maybe it's taught now?) 

While Darwin felt that slavery was wrong, he did not consider slaves as his equal. 

  Steven Rose, in “Darwin, race and gender” wrote,

  He was also convinced that evolution was progressive, and that the white races—especially the Europeans—were evolutionarily more advanced than the black races, thus establishing race differences and a racial hierarchy.

  Phil Moore’s article titled “What Your Biology Teacher Didn’t Tell You About Charles Darwin” is even more distressing.

  What’s astonishing is how little they understand that Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution provided the doctrine behind its white supremacism. Whereas the British Empire of the early 19th century had been dominated by Christian reformers such as William Wilberforce, who sold slave badges that proclaimed, “Am I not a man and a brother?”, Darwin’s writings converted an empire with a conscience into an empire with a scientific philosophy. Four years after Darwin published The Origin of Species, James Hunt turned it into a justification for slavery. In his 1863 paper, “On the Negro’s Place in Nature,” he asserted: “Our Bristol and Liverpool merchants, perhaps, helped to benefit the race when they transported some of them to America.”

  According to this Moore, Darwin’s work has not only been cited to justify slavery, but by other groups seeking to justify their actions. Hitler, for instance.

After reading everything I could about the subject, I have this to say…

You lied, Darwin.

  The pituitary gland is known as the master gland of the body. It’s about the size of a pea and located behind the bridge of the nose between the two hemispheres of the brain. It controls many of the hormones in our body…thus the impressive title.

  It’s responsible for regulating our thyroid gland, breast milk production, adrenal glands, ovaries and testes, and even how much urine we produce (depending on how hydrated we are). In medical school, the pituitary gland received a lot of attention and a lot of test questions. ​

  The pineal gland, situated a little behind the pituitary gland in the middle of the brain (and above the pons in the image), didn’t get nearly as much consideration. Its primary duty is melatonin production. You’ve probably heard of melatonin--you can buy that at the store, right?

My husband says that there are only two types of snakes.
Those that slither away from him and choose life…
and those that dare to approach and choose death.

According to a snake removal service, it can be difficult to tell a venomous snake from a non-venomous snake. The characteristics that I’ve heard before: triangular head, distinct pattern, and even the rattle, can be confusing. (up to 99% of snakes have triangular heads)  Elliptical eyes can be a sign of a poisonous snake but who wants to get that close?
Maybe my husband’s approach is the best after all... 

I don’t find snakes very appealing but I’ve met people that do. I was at a fair recently and found several men who draped their pets around their necks like fashion accessories. ​

It turns out the job is not always as dangerous as it looks. Charmers often remove the poisonous glands and fangs from the snakes they work with. Some will actually stitch the mouth closed, allowing only room for the tongue to wiggle out. Those snakes are doomed to die of starvation.

There are all types of ideas of how to treat snake bites. Here’s a story of a policeman in India who relied on a “snake stone”. Other traditional measures have included incising the site, sucking out the venom, applying a tourniquet, and applying ice. One therapy that I’d never heard of was using electricity. I’m a little vague on that one but I wouldn’t like to experiment with it.

Just FYI.
The correct treatment of a snake bite:

1. Reassure the victim that 70% of bites are non-venomous and 50% of venomous bites are dry bites.
2. Immobilize the limb.
3. Go to the hospital

I bet I didn’t have to mention that last one!

​After reading about their mutual interests, Roosevelt wrote to Muir and asked if they could get together. Muir agreed and then took Teddy Roosevelt to his favorite place in the world—the Yosemite wilderness.

“The mighty Sierra, miles in height, and so gloriously colored and so radiant, it seemed not clothed with light, but wholly composed of it, like the wall of some celestial city.”

  The night was clear, they set up camp under a tree thought to be 2,500 years old, ate fried chicken and drank black coffee by the fire. They talked for hours. In the following days, Roosevelt ditched the 40 blankets that were supplied by his aides and learned to rough it like Muir. Together they weathered snow storms and each other (they found each other annoying at times).

  In the end, Roosevelt came back to Washington enthusiastic about conserving America’s forests and wilderness. According to Wikipedia, Theodore Roosevelt signed “into existence five national parks, 18 national monuments, 55 national bird sanctuaries and wildlife refuges and 150 national forests.”​

  He described the importance of the conservationist movement in a speech:

 “We have become great because of the lavish use of our resources and we have just reason to be proud of our growth. But the time has come to inquire seriously what will happen when our forests are gone, when the coal, the iron, the oil and the gas are exhausted…”
 “…It is time for us now as a nation to exercise the same reasonable foresight in dealing with our great natural resources that would be shown by any prudent man in conserving and widely using the property which contains the assurance of well-being for himself and his children.”

  His words are still true today.

  John Muir, a man who couldn’t quite find a job to fit him,  helped save our national parks because he recognized…

  "In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks."

  We have a lot of work to do, we have to change the way we're living. Decrease our waste. Decrease our emissions. Use more renewable resources. And….protect our wilderness. We can do it.

  "Between every two pine trees there is a door leading to a new way of life."

Click here for more quotes by John Muir.
Image of John Muir from Dec 1906. Public Domain