Where, exactly, was Watson wounded during his military service?
Interestingly enough, Watson gives two separate locations for the Jezail bullet wound that ended his military career. In “A Study in Scarlet” he states “I was struck on the shoulder by a Jezail bullet, which shattered the bone and grazed the subclavian artery”. In “The Sign of Four”, however, we are told “I made no remark, however, but sat nursing my wounded leg. I had had a Jezail bullet through it some time before, and though it did not prevent me from walking it ached wearily at every change of the weather”. The only other mention of his wound is in “The Noble Bachelor”, in which he notes “the Jezail bullet which I had brought back in one of my limbs as a relic of my Afghan campaign throbbed with dull persistence” Numerous interesting scenarios have been suggested to explain these contradictions. One of the earliest is “The Singular Bullet” by J.W. Sovine in the Baker Street Journal in 1959. His thesis is that that the bullet entered through the shoulder, exited again, and lodged in
