A GLASGOW DOCTOR’S ADVICE

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32406, 19 September 1970, Page 10

A GLASGOW DOCTOR’S ADVICE

Gorbals Doctor. By George Gladstone Robertson, U.D., with Roderick Grant. Jerrolds, London. Illustrations. 189 pp. At a time when New Zealand is disturbed about, and hotly debating, the future of medical services this book will probably interest the medical profession, even though it is obviously aimed at the general reader. For New Zealand doctors, who find present conditions so demanding on their time so unfair, if you like, so much in need of drastic reform—there might be some comfort in the fact that the demands on them are surely infinitely less irksome than the daily and nightly responsibilities were for Dr Robertson. Of even more importance is the description of how he dealt with his difficulties and yet retained a dedicated interest in the duties of his profession and an inquiring mind concerning ways of improving methods of treatment. It is apparent that he had an enormous sense of duty to his chosen profession, which he followed for almost 50 years in Glasgow’s notorious Gorgals. Once, before 1920, they were a place of elegant and fashionable residence, then an infamous slum; now they are being tom down and redeveloped with skyscraper blocks of flats. The doctor is critical of the inadequate provision of recreational and other communal activities in the new area. It was here that Dr Robertson saw the'worst of life the poverty, the crime, the drunkenness, the cruelty, family disruption and callousness that arose from hopelessness. The British welfare scheme helped ease the situation, and eventually he relaxed the personal demands on himself by forming a partnership of six practitioners. Dr Robertson tells of ways in which he and his wife found ease from professional strains. He discusses case histories and his continuing studies of pregnancy sickness and rejection dyspepsia, and his eventual interest in the controversial subjects of homeopathy and hypnosis. It could be said that this book has a special interest for New Zealanders; for in 1928 his two sisters settled in Christchurch and three years later his mother joined them. But of more immediate interest to New Zealand is his final chapter entitled “Medicine and the Future.” In it he is both constructive and critical, philosophical and practical, and there is thought in it for both the profession and the layman.