Arthur Conan Doyle, who was in foster care as a child, is well known for having created the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes.

He is less well known for his own detective work disproving a cure for tuberculosis (TB).

According to Dr Howard Markel, on 4 August 1890 Dr Rober Kock announced at the 10th International Medical Congress in Berlin that he had devised a “remedy for tuberculosis” and his discovery was reported internationally.

At the time, Arthur Conan Doyle was a young GP in Southsea, England. He read about Koch’s discovery & went to Berlin. It took a while but eventually he received access to Koch’s data & decided that Koch’s cure wasn’t a cure.

As Howard Merkel writes,

“… it is difficult not to be impressed by how Doyle figured the matter out so quickly, while it took Dr. Koch, one of the most illustrious medical detectives in the world, many more months to realize his error.”