Œuvre n°21 : Chameleon

You may not be familiar with his face, but he was the inspiration for writer Arthur Conan Doyle's best-selling The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

This man is Joseph Bell, born on December 2, 1837 in Edinburgh and is the descendant of a great family of recognized surgeons. He was the last of his line to practice this profession, and far from tainting the family legend, he gave it another dimension.

A studious student, he graduated at the age of 21 and gave his first classes in Surgeon Square at the age of 26. His atypical physique and his insight caused a sensation. At that time, he was Conan Doyle's teacher who told the following anecdote about him :

"He would sit in his reception room, red-faced like an Indian, and diagnose people who came in before they even had a chance to open their mouths. He would tell them their symptoms, and even details of their past lives, almost never making a mistake." It is said that he assisted the police force with his profiling skills, one of his passions.

Joseph Bell, doctor 1837-1911

Roxellan Rhinopithecus or Golden Monkey of China, it has been classified by the IUCN as an "endangered species" due to the destruction of the mountain forests in which it lives and an unsustainable level of hunting practiced for its skin which is highly prized because of its use in traditional Chinese medicine.

It is a very intelligent animal that lives in groups with very particular social behavior. When they reach adulthood, males leave the clan in which they were raised to form a new one. In spite of these separations, the different groups interact with each other when it is necessary, for example, to move from one territory to another; they manage to organize the crossing together.
Apart from this communication, social interactions between members of different clans are rare.

Even though they are aware that they are stronger if they are all grouped together, this mentality of social separatism prevails and makes their organization a complex society operating in a hierarchical manner.

Thanks to their large nasal cavities, these monkeys can communicate like ventriloquists by emitting a whole range of sounds without opening their mouths.

Sapphô the poetess who loved women. She would have been born around 620 BC in Mytilene, on the island of Lesbos. Sapphô does not hide in her poetry her love of the young girls and her desire for them. In Mytilene, she was the head of what she called her moisopolon oikia, "her house dedicated to the muses" where she led a group of young girls in learning singing, dancing and poetry in order to reach social maturity and physical and intellectual development.

Mercury (Latin)/Hermes (Greek), son of Zeus, the father of all the gods and the nymph Maia, daughter of Atlas. He is the god of trade, thieves and travel. Often defined as the most intelligent of the gods, he is cunning, deceitful and graceful. He was the messenger of Olympus, guide of the souls of the dead in hell, symbol of prosperity among humans and protector of travelers, merchants and thieves.