In The Adventure of the Speckled Band, Sherlock Holmes came to the conclusion that "doctors make the greatest criminals". For Sherlock's time period he would be very much correct, doctors are masters at knowing things that could potentially harm the human body. The doctor in the story left hardly a trace, and was very deliberate with his decisions. The four reasons reasons for Holmes' conclusion is poison, intelligence, trust and technology.
For example, doctors know a variety of different chemicals that could poison a person and would be untraceable by examiners or detectives. in the story, the doctor had access to a poisonous snake which most people have never even heard of. Since the doctor knew more about different chemicals and poisons then the coroners he was able to get away with murder. The coroners could not find the teeth marks that the snake had left because they were so small and were hardly visible. The people in the story were terrified of the doctors foreign animals and tried to stay as far as possible, which was also a cause to everyones lack of knowledge of these animals. The doctor's access to these exotic poisons could have helped him create a vast amount of murders.
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Doctors during his time would be able to do some very evil things without anyone detecting them due to the fact that they are very precise with their decisions and wont leave as many clues as a normal thug. Holmes acknowledged the fact that the doctor had left a very little amount of clues to follow. Doctors require a lot of training for their title so that is a clear fact that they are usually smarter than the average criminal. In the story it took the mind of another super intelligent person to solve the mystery, Sherlock Holmes. Even skilled coroners couldn't figure out what had caused the death of the doctors step