“With the approach of the holiday season I noticed alarming symptoms in my amazing friend, Mr. Herlock Sholmes. At frequent intervals his eyes would turn inwards and concentrate on the end of his aquiline nose. Then he would make a vicious sweep with his hand as though to remove an imaginary fly from the tip of his highly-developed proboscis. He would awake at night yelling that spotted starfish were jumping at him. These symptoms led me to the reluctant conclusion that Sholmes was suffering from a condition known to the medical profession as temporarius non compos mentis, or, in other words, a temporary attack of bats in the belfry.”

“The Mystery of the Vacant House”, The Complete Casebook of Herlock Sholmes, Charles Hamilton, printed 1921