The purloined letter

Bibliographic Data

ID20156744
AuthorsEdgar Allan Poe (corresponding author)
Year1987
Volume3
Issue3
Pages71-83
Publication date1987-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Literary Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0256-4718 • E-ISSN: 1753-5387
PublisherUnisa Press (PUBLISHER • ZA)
DOI10.1080/02564718708529833
OpenAlexW2095319500
LanguageEN
Citations received39

Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Purloined Letter,” widely regarded as the first modern detective story, can serve to remind physicians of the importance of both scientific rigor and empathic understanding in their diagnostic and therapeutic roles. After the failure of an extensive and methodical police search, consulting detective C. Auguste Dupin is called upon to locate a stolen letter and does so by combining empirical thinking with his empathic knowledge of the characters involved. The following excerpts illustrate how Dupin and the prefect of police (“G”) use distinct but complementary tools to solve the mystery of where “D” has hidden the letter. Contemporary physicians are well served when they employ both scientific and empathic models of investigation to understand and treat patients. For students and practitioners of medicine, “The Purloined Letter” illustrates the nature of these two ways of thinking and serves as a guide for thoughtful medical decision making. “The Parisian police,” he [Dupin] said, “are exceedingly able in their way. They are persevering, ingenious, cunning, and thoroughly versed in the knowledge which their duties seem chiefly to demand. Thus, when G— detailed to us his mode of searching the premises at the Hotel D—, I felt entire confidence in his having made a satisfactory investigation, so far as his labors extended.” “So far as his labors extended?” said I. “Yes,” said Dupin. “The measures adopted were not only the best of their kind, but carried out to absolute perfection. Had the letter been deposited within the range of their search, these fellows would, beyond a question, have found it.” I merely laughed, but he seemed quite serious in all that he said. “The measures, then,” he continued, “were good in their kind, and well executed; their defect lay in their being inapplicable to the case, and to the man. A certain set of highly ingenious resources are, with the prefect, a sort of Procrustean bed, to which he forcibly adapts his designs. But he perpetually errs by being too deep or too shallow, for the matter in hand; and many a schoolboy is a better reasoner than he.” — “It is merely,” I said, “an identification of the reasoner's intellect with that of his opponent.” — “And the identification,” I said, “of the reasoner's intellect with that of his opponent, depends, if I understand you aright upon the accuracy with which the opponent's intellect is admeasured.” “For its practical value it depends upon this,” replied Dupin; “and the prefect and his cohort fail so frequently, first, by default of this identification, and, secondly, by ill-admeasurement, or rather through non-admeasurement, of the intellect with which they are engaged. They consider only their own ideas of ingenuity; and, in searching for anything hidden, advert only to the modes in which they would have hidden it. [...] What, for example, in this case of D—, has been done to vary the principle of action? What is all this boring, and probing, and sounding, and scrutinizing with the microscope, and dividing the surface of the building into registered square inches; what is it all but an exaggeration of the application of the one principle or set of principles of search, which are based upon the one set of notions regarding human ingenuity, to which the prefect, in the long routine of his duty, has been accustomed? [...] You will now understand what I meant in suggesting that, had the purloined letter been hidden anywhere within the limits of the prefect’s examination—in other words, had the principle of its concealment been comprehended within the principles of the prefect, its discovery would have been a matter altogether beyond question. [...]”

French Literature and Poetry · Historical and Literary Studies · Musicology and Musical Analysis · Psychology

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