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The notoriety of chloroform was adeptly harnessed by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In several Sherlock Holmes stories, such as ‘His Last Bow’, chloroform is used in a way we would recognise today. In this story, Holmes himself incapacitates a spy by covering his victim’s mouth with a rag dipped in chloroform. The twist is that chloroform cannot be effectively administered in this way, as it would take longer than a few seconds to anaesthetise someone. Covering their mouth with it would probably suffocate them too. Surely Holmes would have deduced this? But, as Watson once said of Holmes, “His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge.”