Mexican Army Cipher Wheel. The device credited to Holmes was in real life invented by the Mexican Army and remained in use up to the end of World War One.
Cryptography. The earliest known text containing components of cryptography was found on the tomb of an Egyptian nobleman. Around 1900 BCE Khnumhotep’s scribe drew his master’s life in his tomb, using a number of unusual symbols to obscure the meaning of the inscriptions. This method of encryption is an example of a substitution cipher, any system which substitutes one symbol or character for another, in Khnumhotep’s case probably used to preserve the sacred nature of religious rituals from the common people.
George Macartney. The real-life Macartney was the son of a Scottish father and Chinese mother. British Agent, then Consul-General in Kashgar for 28 years - his entire career as a diplomat - officially he lived in this backwater to look after the needs of a small British Indian community, mainly traders and money-lenders.
In reality he had a quite incredibly important task, intelligence-gathering, to keep watch on Tsarist machinations on the front lines of the two rival Empires and safeguard British India from Russian predation. He was knighted in 1913. In 1931 his wife Lady Catherine Macartney published ‘An English Lady In Chinese Turkestan’, a good read.
The Silk Roads. Today’s China for both commercial and geopolitical reasons is opening up the ancient Silk Roads once more. An article titled ‘The Silk Roads Rise Again’ appeared in the New Statesman 23-29 October 2015 by Peter Frankopan, including some interesting background: ‘The term ‘Silk Roads’, or Seidenstraße, was coined in 1877 by the German geographer Ferdinand von Richthofen. It denoted the mesh of cities, oases and routes criss-crossing Asia, linking the Pacific with the Mediterranean, and the Red Sea, Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean with Russia, Scandinavia and Europe. Along these networks the world’s great religions rose and spread.’
Crows and the Chinese. In Chinese mythology, the world originally had 10 suns either spiritually embodied as 10 crows and/or carried by 10 crows; when all 10 decided to rise at once, the effect was devastating to crops, so the gods sent their greatest archer Houyi to shoot down nine crows and spare only one.
Crows are almost universally maligned and for no good reason. They are now believed to be as intelligent as a seven-year-old human, the only non-primate species known to make tools such as prodding sticks and hooks which they use to pick out grubs from awkward places. A recent study showed crows worked out how to obtain floating food rewards by dropping heavy objects into water-filled tubes. They must have watched Archimedes of Syracuse at work.
Although the Empress-Dowager may not have carried out her threat to eliminate the crow from her Empire, fifty years later Mao Zedong ordered the Great Sparrow Campaign known officially as the Four Pests Campaign. The four pests to be eliminated were rats, flies, mosquitoes, and a bird, the sparrow. The masses of China were mobilized. Citizens took to banging pots and pans or beating drums to scare the birds from landing, forcing them to fly until they fell from the sky in exhaustion. Sparrow nests were torn down, eggs were broken, and nestlings killed. Other birds were also shot down from the sky, resulting in the near-extinction of birds in China.
As can happen when humankind engages in a great assault on Nature, things didn’t work out well. By April 1960, Chinese leaders realized sparrows eat a large amount of insects, as well as grains. Instead of increasing rice yields, crops were substantially lower. Mao ordered the end of the campaign against sparrows, replacing them with a different enemy, bed bugs, in the ongoing campaign against the Four Pests. It was too late. With no sparrows to eat them, locust populations ballooned, swarming the country and compounding the ecological problems already caused by the Great Leap Forward, including widespread deforestation and misuse of poisons and pesticides.
in articulo mortis: at the point of death. Used naturally by Dr. Watson from his medical experience.
Basenji. Breed of hunting dog from stock originating in central Africa. The Basenji produces an unusual yodel-like sound due to the shape of its larynx. This trait gives the Basenji the nickname ‘soundless dog’.
Life-preserver. Chiefly British usage. A hand-weapon such as a cosh or blackjack.
100 Days of Reform. In 1898, the young Kuang-hsü Emperor suddenly initiated an all-out attempt at renovating the Chinese state and social system. He issued more than 40 edicts in quick succession which would have transformed every aspect of Chinese society. The old civil service examination system based on the Chinese Classics was ordered abolished. A new system of national schools and colleges was established. Western industry, medicine, science, commerce, and patent systems were promoted and adopted. Government administration was revamped. The law code was changed, the military was reformed, and corruption attacked. The attack on corruption, the army, and the traditional educational system threatened long-entrenched and privileged classes.
As a result the attempted reforms were short-lived. Conservative forces forcefully rallied behind the Empress Dowager. With the army on her side, she carried out a successful coup d’état and for several years kept the Emperor imprisoned in his lake palace.
Royal Army Medical Corps. As Watson would have known, it was in 1898 that a single Army Medical Corps was created. In the Boer wars and WW1 and WW2, the Corps dealt with 14 million casualties, and was awarded many medals, including 14 Victoria Crosses (two with Bars).
Field Service Pocket Book. Watson’s references are based on a later edition lent to me by Major General John Moore-Bick. The 1914 edition is especially interesting because it summarises the state of the British Army at the outbreak of the Great War. On Watson’s long journey to Kashgar and Peking he would have read a contemporary copy, on war establishments, system of command in the field, and summaries covering ciphers, construction of trenches, setting up firing positions, even the construction of emergency railway stations.
Hippocratic Oath. Historically taken by physicians, one of the most widely known of Greek medical texts. In its original form, it required a new physician to swear, by a number of healing gods, to uphold specific ethical standards.
Aeroscope film camera. Patented in England in 1910 by the Polish inventor Kazimierz Prószyński, the Aeroscope was the first successful hand-held operated film camera. It was powered by compressed air pumped into the camera with a simple hand pump, similar to the one used for bicycle tyres. This made it possible to film hand-held in most difficult circumstances, notably from early airplanes.
The camera came into its own on the battlefield during the Great War. Several cameramen died filming from the front lines and because of this the innocent Aeroscope got the nickname ‘camera of death’.
British Empire. Where I speak of the time the British Empire comes to its end was from a piece in the New Statesman, 18 March 2016, by Jeremy Seabrook, titled ‘The World Of Yesterday’.
Boxers. The violent anti-foreign, anti-Christian uprising in China towards the end of the Ch’ing dynasty between 1899 and 1901. Although women were not allowed to join the Boxer units, they formed their own groups, the Red Lanterns. Popular local lore reported that the women were able to fly, walk on water, set Christians’ homes on fire, and stop foreign guns, powers which even the Boxer men themselves did not claim.