8 Ridiculously Inappropriate Phrases And Acts In Sherlock Holmes Stories

2. Rampant Smoking €“ Various Books

The archetypal image of Sherlock Holmes, as portrayed on screen by Basil Rathbone, is of a tall man in a deerstalker hat, smoking a pipe whilst holding a magnifying glass. The pipe has created a dilemma for almost every modern adaptation €“ particularly for Robert Downey Jr, who is known to avoid all addictive substances since his stints in rehab over the past two decades. During the 19th Century smoking was so widely used in society that it was hard to avoid the toxic mist that accompanies it, and it would in no doubt have been atypical for Holmes to have not smoked. However, given the use of cocaine by Holmes, it is not altogether surprising that the detective seems to be a chain smoker; in numerous books Watson announces his disdain at the constant smoking of Holmes. Holmes' tendency to smoke so much has created a memorable image, but one which is frozen in the 1880s. Due to this isolation it is impossible to translate these habits into something that could be accepted in a world in which smoking has been banned in public places and stigmatised to such a high extent. This attribute of Holmes is the one which has perhaps been the hardest to translate into modernity; Benedict Cumberbatch uses nicotine patches in Sherlock as well as intermittently smoking to show Holmes has many vices.