On September 20th, 1879 the British Medical Journal published a letter entitled “Gelsemium as a Poison” in which Doyle recounts his use of gelsemium as a treatment for neuralgia (nerve pain). Gelsemium is also called Yellow Jasmine (or Jessamine). This was not something which had been prescribed for him. This was before he had invented Sherlock Holmes, so it is curious that he gave Sherlock the same predilection for self-experimentation.
Doyle was “determined to ascertain how far one might go in taking the drug, and what the primary symptoms of an overdose might be.” Again, I remind you that this was not something which research to that point had suggested might work. He just wanted to try it and see how far it could go. Fortunately, Doyle was a good scientist and recorded his observations, dose and physiological effects. He avoided other drugs (eg: tobacco) while experimenting on himself, and dosed himself at the same time each day. What he did was effectively brew a tea from the flowers and take drops of it. In old-fashioned measurements each drop equals 1 “minum”. In modern measurements we’d call it 0.06 ml (so about 17 drops/minums = 1 ml).
The results were… (drum roll)…
At doses between 40 and 60 minums he observed no effects. This did not deter him, and he kept ramping up the dose. At least he started low and kept the increments small. Things got interesting at 90 minums (about 5.4 ml). About twenty minutes after ingestion Doyle experienced extreme “giddiness” and a form of mild paralysis. He was also experiencing a depressed mood. But this did not stop him. At 120 minums (7.2 ml) the giddiness was lessened, but several hours later he had vision problems to go with the mild paralysis, but still this did not stop him.
Increasing the dose to 150 minums (9 ml) actually helped reduce the vision, mental health and giddiness problems. But there were some other side effects which had been present in milder form a lower doses but were now practically unbearable: a headache and crippling, “prostrating”, diarrhea. But this did not stop him. (When I first read about this, it reminded me of the Very Hungry Catepillar. Why would you keep going when there were these side effects?)
Doyle increased the dose all the way to 200 minums (12 ml) but in addition to the headache and diarrhea his pulse grew so weak from the paralysis he knew he could go no further without risking his life. At last he stopped.
He concluded that healthy adults may take up to 90 minums, but that at doses of 90-120 the drug induces a sort of mild paralysis (of both the voluntary and involuntary motor systems). Doyle thought a person may become tolerant to its effects, much like they do to other drugs such as opium (his comparison, not mine). It is scary how close he came to overdosing (people have died from ingesting gelsemium) and therefore depriving the world of his later creation, Sherlock Holmes.
What I find most fascinating about this is how well Doyle stuck to the scientific method. It may seem odd that I am surprised by this given Doyle was a medical doctor, but he was also an ardent spiritualist. He believed in fairies, spirits and life after death, and even that mediums could communicate with the spirit world. These beliefs just seem at odds with the cold logic of his most famous character, Sherlock Holmes, and a rigorous scientific approach. Though famously modelled on Joseph Bell, I can’t help but wonder how much of Doyle as a young man (ie before his spiritual side became dominant) is in the character of Sherlock.
I stumbled across this story about Doyle while researching poisons for a story called Sever-Reign. That story wound up being highly commended in the 2017 Wordfest Competition and can be read for free here. It is also included in my anthology, Movemind. I have also self-experimented to improve my sleep which you can read about here. Next time I’ll talk about the accidental finding of millennia old texts and the controversy over what happened next.
This post is part of my Great Moments in Literature series. So you never miss a new Great Moment, please subscribe to my list or this website.
Robert New 
This blog post is definitely rather handy since I’m at the moment creating an internet floral website – although I am only starting out therefore it’s really fairly small. Thanks much. Zoey Olsen
I really liked this article on Conan Doyle’s (foolhardy) attempt to discover the joys of gelsinium, and his (relatively) scientific approach to the challenge. But as you say, it was very dangerous, and risked depriving the world of Sherlock Holmes. Perish the thought!
As an aside, gelsinium became part of a story line in Netflix’s House of Cards series. The president’s wife (Claire Underwood) knocks off her ex-lover and writer of a biography on Francis Underwood that would have been embarrassing to him. The poison was introduced to Claire Underwood by an adviser to ‘help’ her with her headaches. Well she used it metaphorically: she rid herself of a real headache by killing the man! A terrifying, hideous but gripping scene, and the science wasn’t too bad either.
Very interesting! House of Cards is one of those series I have on my list as one I should watch one day. I think I first heard about the plant on iZombie 😉 and having a colour-themed detective series thought it sounded interesting and a potential candidate for a ‘yellow’ story. I wound up using it in a non-detective piece for my collection Movemind in the story ‘Sever-reign’ where a Queen uses it to poison a President.
While we’re on the topic of yellow Robert, you may want to investigate an extraordinary toxic side-effect of too much digoxin. This drug is used for heart failure, and derived from the foxglove plant. The plant has its own fascinating history. Worth a quick look up, but in summary, an old ‘witch’ / herbalist used it to help people in her village with ‘dropsy’ (congestive heart failure), and, unlike everything formal doctors used at the time, it actually worked and was documented by a perceptive physician.
Anyhoo: where yellow comes in: an overdose of digoxin causes one to see the color yellow extremely heightened. Nobody knows why, and no other drug does it. I have seen this clinically once, and was able to detect it – the formal tests for digoxin levels (of which it is easy to have too much of: aka it has a low ‘therapeutic index’) require expensive and time-consuming HPLC methods. The patient, an older lady recovered well, but had been forgetting when she’d been taking her doses and consequently was doubling up! Perhaps a thought for your next color-inspired crime novel?
That is interesting. Definitely giving me ideas. I haven’t written the yellow story for book three yet, though I did have a pretty complete plot outline for a story – now the question becomes which one do I save for book 4? As a related aside, I’ve heard viagra can cause colour blindness/distortion as a temporary side-effect. I have wondered if an already colour-blind person took it and experienced the side effect would that mean they see in monochrome?
No Robert, it is believed impossible (though nobody can definitively prove it given the condition) that a colour blind person could suddenly see colour after Viagra (or any other drug). The visual neurons are pre-set at birth, and can’t be relearnt unfortunately.