Sherlock Holmes and anaesthesia.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's first Sherlock Holmes adventure, A Study in Scarlet, was published 100 years ago. Between 1887 and 1927 he wrote 56 short stories and four novels about his fictional detective. Episodes in the adventures which relate to anaesthetic drugs are described. Use of the drugs was criminal in the case of chloroform, opium, and curare; therapeutic in the case of morphine; and recreational when Holmes himself used cocaine.