BETWEEN CORPSES.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 267, 10 November 1928, Page 10

BETWEEN CORPSES.

[Experiences In Life Of Oldest Medico. . . ■ . SUSTAINS SEVERE . INJURY. (Australian Press Service.) ;..-. ■ * ,--. ■■ .-■ (Received 10 a.m.) v ..0 1-. . ■'-'■■'■;-"- LONDON, November 9. ';■ ;'' Sir David Serjeant, who is 98/»years of age, while bending down to pick up an article from the floor overbalanced and broke his'leg. He is. now ma critical condition in hospital. In he made a voyage to Australia which took 82 days, and while .in Melbourne he took ill. He was taken to a crude hospital at, Canvastown, ,where. he lay with'a corpse on either side of nim -\yhile the nurse was. dead drunk. ' "i.-Sir David was a paperhanger, a gardener, painter, conveyancer and builder s labourer before he returned to London in 1859 to resume and complete His medical training.'

'•• Sir David Maurice "Serjeant, physician and' surgeon, was educated lat Cambridge and Gu?b Hospital. He U i now the senior &er:in Britain. WiH^e,^^, j is interesting . to recall that the only survivor of' the first : great • Australian match, played be-, tween Victoria and New South Wales, is Sir David Serjeant. While ap-i prenticed .to a surgeon, the.usual preliminary,"_ training for medicine in those " day's,,- 'he determined, as '■' his "'-''-■•' - . i • • .. ' father was not a rich man, to' go to .- . :., ... Australia and earn the money he needed to "walk the hospitals" for two years and a-half. Arrived there, he went to the goldfields, when they were the magnet for the adventurous, but eventually' returned' to Melbourne, where he turned his hand to many activities, becoming, in :turn gardener, painter, paperhanger, engrossing and conveyancing clerk.' After seven and' a-half years he re; turned to England with the money which enabled him to finish his medical education. Then he practised as a ship's surgeon,' and hi' Huntingdonshire, before he came-to • L'ondon> where he settled-in a house- from: which he has never moved more than two hundred yards away during half a i century. In .the local-politics of Camberwell he has-played a prominent part, and it was for these services he .'was knighted. "- "--■ /■■'' ■" j ,' .