Alcohol (and I'm sure you know this) was not Holmes' "escapist drug" of choice.
No. But it was Watson's remedy for just about any ailment in the Sherlockian Canon..!!
Fainting? booze. Stomache ills? booze. A
sting by The Lion's Mane? booze. Completely missing the boat on the right deductions? booze.
I used to say most of Sherlock's 'deductions' were actually 'inductions'... which is actually quite the bit more amazing, since induction is far more difficult for folks than deduction. Certainly was for Watson. And poor Doyle himself didn't ever quite get there in sharing what his Sherlockian works were really demonstrating. Yet he was wise in leaving it to his readers to 'deduce.'
He did get us so very close we can deduce it ourselves, as he said such things as 'from a drop of water...a logician could
infer the possibiility of an Atlantic or a Niagara without having seen or heard of one or the other.' And 'pray tell me what it is that you can
infer from this hat?' and many othere instances. There are 38 references to 'infer', 'inference' and inferences'. Yet he called it the 'science of deduction'.
Holmes' work was 'the science of deduction' because he spent a great deal of time
inferring from the minutia, and once develiping his body of 'probabilities' he was enabled to '
deduce' the solution to the situation at hand correctly, many if not most of the times. Thus it's a 'science'... involving more induction than deduction but one united whole.
You probably all know this and I'm babbling nonsensically, but it took me some time to put it all together back in the day.
Thank you for bringing Sherlock to the fore for a moment.... quite nostalgiac for me.