Elementary, my dear
December 8th, 2009
Writing the New York Times ‘Diagnosis’ column, Dr. Lisa Sanders ponders whether Sherlock Holmes might have had Asperger’s syndrome. The fictional private eye, to be featured in an upcoming film starring Robert Downey Jr., had many symptoms of the syndrome, she says, including an obsessive focus on narrow subjects, mood swings and an apparent inability to relate to others.
Sanders says author Arthur Conan Doyle, Holmes’ creator, trained as a physician and filled his stories with realistic medical description. Could he have based Holmes on patients he observed? “We may never know,” she says, “but clearly Holmes’s peculiarities have a persistent appeal.”
(Movie poster from imdb.com)
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