Sound like an odd combination? It would be for anyone other than Sherlock Holmes. There are few characters as well known and well loved as Sherlock. Though he may not be the first fictional detective to be published, he certainly is the most influential. Sherlock set the bar for other detective stories and many fictional detectives are clearly modeled after Sherlock. But what about real detectives? Sherlock has definitely influenced those as well. Though Sherlock is a fictional character, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle uses him to pioneer the start of modern forensic science through the use of new techniques and deductive reasoning.
When one thinks of modern day crime scenes, a picture of people dressed in what looks like plastic bags, all of whom
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The first one of these methods inspired by Sherlock is bloodstain pattern analysis. “Bloodstain pattern analysis is the interpretation of bloodstains at a crime scene in order to recreate the actions that caused the bloodshed” (“A Simplified Guide to Bloodstain Pattern Analysis”). Dr. Paul Kirk was intrigued by Sherlock’s method and applied Sherlock’s meticulous nature in observing his own crime scenes, eventually starting the practice of analyzing blood splatters in real police investigations. He specifically named something called the cast off spatter pattern, which indicates information about the blow. This eventually led to the exoneration of Dr. Sam Shepard as the cast off showed that his wife’s murderer was left-handed while he himself was right-handed (How Sherlock Changed the World). Dr. Henry Lee, one of the world’s leading forensic scientists, was also able to rule that because of an empty spot in the blood splatters, the victim was not murdered by his wife, but rather died of liver cirrhosis - which can cause one to vomit blood that the victim eventually choked on and died (How Sherlock Changed the World). It was also Sherlock Holmes who introduced the science of ballistics, as it had never been analyzed by the police force before then and was not considered a science at all. Sherlock is able