In the opening scene of Arthur Conan Doyle's 1890 novel 'The Sign of Four', Sherlock Holmes injects himself with a 7 per cent solution of cocaine using a hypodermic syringe.
Notes on verification
Confirmed directly against the original text of the novel, corroborated by Project Gutenberg, Wikipedia, and a dedicated Conan Doyle reference site. [cascade flags: wikipedia_dropped_other_sources_exist | tier=bronze indep_score=0.525 clusters=2 claim_tier=notable | kind=attributed eligibility=high]
Sources
- Cocaine, the Victorian wonder drug | Wellcome Collection (seed:anatomy_and_medical_oddities)
- https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2097/2097-h/2097-h.htm (corroboration)
- https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php/The_Sign_of_Four (corroboration)