Conan Doyle's graduation

This photograph was taken on the day of Conan Doyle's graduation as Bachelor of Medicine at the University of Edinburgh. Conan Doyle trained as a doctor at the University of Edinburgh from 1876 to 1881, during which time his fellow students included J. M. Barrie (who later wrote Peter Pan) and Robert Louis Stevenson, author of Treasure Island and Dr Jeckyll and Mr Hyde.

He also became friends with Dr Joseph Bell, one of the university tutors, a man well-known for his method of deducing information about people and their lives through simple acts of observation and deduction. This was the detective method Conan Doyle later attributed to his great detective, Sherlock Holmes, as he himself later acknowledged, "It is no wonder that after the study of such a character, I used and amplified his methods when…I tried to build up a scientific detective who solves cases on his own merits and not through the folly of the criminal.