<P> Supported by wealthy uncles, Doyle was sent to England, at the Jesuit preparatory school Hodder Place, Stonyhurst in Lancashire at the age of nine (1868--70). He then went on to Stonyhurst College until 1875 . From 1875 to 1876, he was educated at the Jesuit school Stella Matutina in Feldkirch, Austria . He later rejected the Catholic faith and became an agnostic . He also later became a spiritualist mystic . </P> <P> From 1876 to 1881, Doyle studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh Medical School, including periods working in Aston (then a town in Warwickshire, now part of Birmingham), Sheffield and Ruyton - XI - Towns, Shropshire . During that time, he studied practical botany at the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh . While studying, Doyle began writing short stories . His earliest extant fiction, "The Haunted Grange of Goresthorpe", was unsuccessfully submitted to Blackwood's Magazine . His first published piece, "The Mystery of Sasassa Valley", a story set in South Africa, was printed in Chambers's Edinburgh Journal on 6 September 1879 . On 20 September 1879, he published his first academic article, "Gelsemium as a Poison" in the British Medical Journal, a study which The Daily Telegraph regarded as potentially useful in a 21st - century alleged murder investigation . </P> <P> Doyle was the doctor on the Greenland whaler Hope of Peterhead in 1880 . As M.B., C.M. after his graduation from university in 1881, he was ship's surgeon on the SS Mayumba during a voyage to the West African coast . He completed his Doctor of Medicine degree (an advanced degree in Scotland beyond the usual medical degrees) on the subject of tabes dorsalis in 1885 . </P> <P> In 1882, Doyle joined former classmate George Turnavine Budd as his partner at a medical practice in Plymouth, but their relationship proved difficult, and Doyle soon left to set up an independent practice . Arriving in Portsmouth in June 1882, with less than £ 10 (£ 900 today) to his name, he set up a medical practice at 1 Bush Villas in Elm Grove, Southsea . The practice was not successful . While waiting for patients, Doyle returned to writing fiction . </P>

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