"It is not easy to express the inexpressible," he answered with a laugh.
"Holmes is a little too scientific for my tastes - it approaches to cold-bloodedness.
I could imagine his giving a friend a little pinch of the latest vegetable alkaloid, not out of malevolence, you understand, but simply out of a spirit of inquiry in order to have an accurate idea of the effects.
To do him justice, I think that he would take it himself with the same readiness.
He appears to have a passion for definite and exact knowledge."
"Very right too."
"Yes, but it may be pushed to excess. When it comes to beating the subjects in the dissecting-rooms with a stick, it is certainly taking rather a bizarre shape."
"Beating the subjects!"
"Yes, to verify how far bruises may be produced after death. I saw him at it with my own eyes."
"And yet you say he is not a medical student?"