Young Sherlock Holmes_ Red Leech - Andrew Lane [110]
On the other hand, the giant red leech of Borneo that is known to science is not actually a bloodsucker, but instead eats the giant Borneo earthworm. The leech that Duke Balthassar uses for medical purposes here is, I suggest, a currently unknown species, but given the number of previously unknown species of animal discovered every year, from insects up to mammals, it’s entirely possible that there is a giant red bloodsucking leech out there somewhere. The substance secreted in leech saliva to suppress the clotting of blood is factual: the substance is called hirudin, and leeches are increasingly being used in hospitals to stop potentially dangerous blood clots forming in surgery patients. You still can’t get them on prescription, though.
The large reptiles that chase Sherlock, Matty and Virginia in Duke Balthassar’s animal enclosure are monitor lizards. Monitor lizards can grow up to several metres in length, have a high metabolic rate compared with most other reptiles and can be as intelligent as a small dog (experiments have shown that monitor lizards can count up to six, although no scientist has yet shown what use this is to them).
The laying of the first undersea cables between Ireland and America is one of the nineteenth century’s most incredible stories. I can recommend the following book as a great explanation:
A Thread Across the Ocean — The Heroic Story of the Transatlantic Cable by John Steele Gordon (Simon and Schuster, 2002)
Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin, who meets with Sherlock on the SS Scotia and then again later, took leave from the German Army in 1863 and travelled to America, where he acted as an observer for the Northern Potomac Army in the American Civil War against the Confederates. Crucially, while there he also met Professor Thaddeus Lowe, who was using tethered balloons as reconnaissance platforms in the Civil War, observing Confederate troop movements on behalf of the Union. All balloon rides had been made off limits to civilians, so instead Professor Lowe sent von Zeppelin to visit his German assistant John Steiner, who could talk to von Zeppelin in German, rather than using von Zeppelin’s halting English. Von Zeppelin made his first ascent with Steiner’s tethered balloon. Fascinated with the possibilities of balloons, von Zeppelin returned to America in the 1870s to talk to Lowe again (although I have moved the date of this trip slightly to make it fit in with the timeline of this book). Later, back in Germany, he would design the rigid balloon – the Zeppelin – that would make him famous.
Detail on New York, and the rest of America, in the 1860s, was provided by:
Transatlantic Crossing – American Visitors to Britain and British Visitors to America in the Nineteenth Century selected and edited by Walter Allen (William Heinemann, 1971)
The Sun and the Moon – The Remarkable True Account of Hoaxers, Showmen, Dueling Journalists and Lunar Man-Bats in Nineteenth-Century New York, by Matthew Goodman (Basic Books, 2008)
Material on the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the historical aftermath was gleaned from:
‘They Have Killed Papa Dead!’ – The Road to Ford’s Theatre, Abraham Lincoln’s Murder, and the Rage for Vengeance by Anthony S. Pitch (Steerforth Press, 2008)
It proved strangely difficult to find out very much about American railroads in the 1860s. A map would have been nice, or at the very least a timetable to show me how many changes of train a man would need to make to get from New York to Pennsylvania, but if such books exist then I couldn’t find them. What little detail I did glean came from:
The American Railroad Network, 1861–1890 by George Rogers Taylor and Irene D. Neu (University of Illinois Press, 2003)
Guidebook for Tourists and Travellers over the Valley Railway From Cleveland to Canton (facsimile of the 1880 edition) by John S. Reese (The Kent State Press, 2002)
Bizarrely, there have been several plans by Americans, some associated with the US Government and some not, to take parts of Canada off Great Britain’s hands by force of arms over the