[Sherlock Holmes, Watson and cocaine. A literary contribution to the history of drug addiction].

From 1887 to 1927, Conan Doyle devoted fifty-six short stories and four novels to the extraordinary investigations of Sherlock Holmes. Special passages from these works, gathered here in the form of long extracts, evoke the passion of the celebrated detective for cocaine and constitute rather generally an original sort of evidence on the emergence of drug addicts in Europe at the end of the 19th century.