Dr. Watson If you won't, I will for you". Holmes suavely responds: "You may do what you like, Doctor". Therefore, the story is presented as "a reprint from the reminiscences of John H. Watson", and most other stories of the series share this by implication. In the first chapter of "The Sign of Four", Holmes comments on Watson's first effort as a biographer: "I glanced over it. Honestly, I cannot congratulate you upon it. Detection is, or ought to be, an exact science and should be treated in the same cold and unemotional manner. You have attempted to tinge it with romanticism...
Riley Watson Riley Watson Joseph Riley Watson (28 March 1859 – 18 October 1915) was an English medical doctor and public health official who was also in his youth a cricketer who played first-class cricket in two matches in the 1880s. He was born at Steeton-in-Craven, Yorkshire and died at Harrogate, also in Yorkshire. Watson was educated at Pannal College, Harrogate and then at a succession of medical training establishments and universities: The Yorkshire College of Science (later Leeds University); University College, London; Christ's College, Cambridge; and then the University of Edinburgh. He graduated from Cambridge University with a Bachelor of Arts