The Creeping Man

Almost everyone who has heard of Sherlock Holmes has also heard of his quippy letter to Watson: “Come at once if convenient. If inconvenient, come all the same. - S.H.” 

Almost no one could name the title of the short story from which it comes.

The Adventure of the Creeping Man is the fascinating account of Professor Presbury, a 61 year old well-to-do gentleman who becomes engaged to a young woman, the daughter of one of his colleagues. Apparently, in an effort to engage in the frenzied passion of young love, Professor Presbury engages the services of an experimental doctor who extracts certain chemicals from a particular monkey. He believes that the chemicals, once injected into a human patient, will give the patient some of the physical qualities of the monkey, primarily the qualities of feeling young again.

The injections have an unintended effect, however. Professor Presbury begins to act like a monkey whenever he takes the injections. His loved ones find him creeping along the passageways and climbing the ledges. His own beloved dog fails to recognize him and, in the end, nearly kills him by chewing his face off. 

Once the mystery is solved, Sherlock Holmes makes the interesting comment: “There is danger there — a very real danger to humanity. Consider, Watson, that the material, the sensual, the worldly would all prolong their worthless lives. The spiritual would not avoid the call to something higher. It would be the survival of the least fit. What sort of cesspool may not our poor world become?”

The Sherlock Holmes of Conan Doyle cannot be said to be a religious person, per se. In his original form, he was, at best, a deist. Still, he sees something here that is well worth the time of the modern to consider. 

Are you willing to become the creeping man through an endless hunger and desire to live? Buyer beware: Not only may your supplement not have the intended consequence; it may not not what you think it is at all.