If someone had asked Sherlock Holmes later in the year, there is little doubt that he would have said his life began that spring day in 1871 when he met Violet Rushdale upon the moors and ended in the winter some months distant. His mother would have disputed the former claim, and many, both friend and foe, would come to deny the latter. Yet what happened that year nearly cost him his life and his sanity, and strongly influenced the man he was to become. "Grit in a sensitive instrument, or a crack in one of his high powered lenses, would not be more disturbing than a strong emotion in a nature such as his." Dr. John H. Watson in "A Scandal in Bohemia," The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.