who wrote The Scalp Hunters (1851), young Arthur's favorite book. As an adult, Conan Doyle felt that the highest vocation he could pursue as a writer was to create well-researched historical romances idealizing British history.

The Doyles sent Arthur to an austere Jesuit school for his early education. Despite the Spartan fare and harsh discipline, Arthur excelled. When Arthur left the Jesuits, Mary Doyle persuaded him to pursue a medical degree at the University of Edinburgh. Arthur agreed, more out of a practical desire for a reliable profession than out of passion for the subject. By this time, Charles Doyle had lost his job, and the family had difficulty paying the school fees. A lodger named Bryan Charles Waller became the family's protector, eventually supporting Mary, Charles, and their children completely.

Dr. Joseph Bell

Once at university, Conan Doyle found the work difficult and boring. He gained more amusement from playing sports, at which he excelled, than in listening to lectures in large, crowded lecture halls. More interesting than studying was describing his instructors' eccentric personalities. Among his teachers was the man Conan Doyle later acknowledged as his inspiration for Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Joseph Bell. Dr. Bell taught his students the importance of observation, using all the senses to obtain an accurate diagnosis. He enjoyed impressing students by guessing a person's profession from a few indications, through a combination of deductive and inductive reasoning, like Holmes. Although Bell's methods fascinated Conan Doyle, his cold indifference towards his patients repelled the young medical student. Some of this coldness found its way into Sherlock Holmes's character, especially in the early stories.

Around the time he obtained his medical degree, Conan Doyle's crisis of faith, which had been brewing since his days with the Jesuits, came to a head. He announced to his uncles that he had turned away from organized religion, shocking them deeply and causing them to withdraw their support. Because he refused to practice his family's religion, Conan Doyle was forced to make own way in the medical profession, with neither financial help nor letters of introduction to influential people. He was an uneasy agnostic, however, and although he hoped that pure rationalism could take the place of religion for him, it never did. Around 1880, he began to attend séances, and by the end of his life he had become an ardent spiritualist.

A restless man who loved adventure and physical activity, Conan Doyle took any opportunity to travel. He grew interested in photography and published several articles about it. To make a few extra pounds while studying medicine, he hired on as ship's doctor on brief voyages to the Antarctic and Africa. He also began to write short stories for sale, based on the adventure tales he had loved as a child and on his own first-hand experiences. After graduation, he struggled to establish a medical practice, since he could not afford to buy one. Although hampered by poverty and his lack of social connections, Conan Doyle achieved a modest success in medicine. His 1885 marriage to Louise Hawkins, the sister of a patient who had died, provided him with a small supplemental income that raised his standard of living.

In 1886, Doyle finished the first Sherlock Holmes novella, A Study in Scarlet. After several rejections, he was forced to sell it outright for £25 for inclusion in the 1887 Beeton's Christmas Annual, a holiday collection that often sold out, but did not usually attract much attention in the national press.