The Diary of a Doctor Who Tells

Evening Star, Issue 23864, 19 April 1941, Page 3

The Diary of a Doctor Who Tells

Monday, April 14. I had Mondayitis this morning, but it was in a good cause. A two hours’ sleep this afternoon helped to restore things to normal, but I’m rather Imping that there will bo no interruptions when once 1 get to bed tonight. Babies have been the trouble this week-end. Babies are back again. Cuddlesoine, gurgling babies arc in the fashion again, and no mother who wants to bo thought anybody can afford to bo without one. 1 have ushered four into the world in the past 48 hours, a record which hasn’t been equalled since my student days. There nave been seven in the past seven days. Yes, babies are back again. There have been all sorts of reasons given as to why babies were out of fashion in the nineteen thirties. People preferred cars, fiat life made them impossible, there was no economic or national security, women had become increasingly selfish, war was inevitable . . . and so on. And now babies arc back. Why? War marriages, of course; a burning desire to have the greatest of all memories of a departed husband, an unconscious urge to safeguard the race . . . and so on. But, whatever it is. babies are back. Thousands of homes are going to be happier, thousands of young parents are going to have something to work for and fight for, thousands of marriages are going to avoid the rocks of divorce. In my student days I was trained, with a group of other students, by an old obstetrical nurse who’d been in the game for 30 years. Uneducated scholastically, she was the last word in midwifery. “ Young man,” she used to say to a luckless student who was not doing a 100 per cent, job, “ when you’ve horned 20,000 babies like I’ve horned them you won’t do any such foolishness. Babies are precious things, bless their hearts. You men shouldn’t bo allowed near them nowise. Thank God you’re privileged more than you know. Go easy there, young man.” Then, turning to tho mother, she’d say: “ You’ve got a job to do, young woman; see you do it botter’n a man would, and don’t let’s have any whimpering. Babies are worth goin’ through a hit for.” She thoroughly scared ns students and controlled the mothers like a major-general. When students and mothers left the hospital they both realised that she herself was someone worth loving. She was nick-named Dreadnought Sue. Tuesday, April 15. “ Well, how’s the lad?” I asked Mrs Kingswich, whose son is abroad with the forces. “ Any news from him?” “ I had a letter last week,” she said, “ but, of course, he doesn’t say much about where he is. 1 expect they aren’t- allowed. I’m sure he must be feeling the heat, though. It must be terribly hot up in those tropical countries.” “ They dress for it,” I replied. ' ‘‘Maybe,” she said, “but it must be just about boiling, especially now summer’s coming on.”' “ There’s a lot of mistaken ideas about tropical heat,” I replied. “ I’ve spent a hit of time there, and I’ve been in the Australian outback. When it’s over a hundred every day for a month or two you begin to know what heat means.” “ But it’s the humidity that’s the trouble in the tropics, isn’t it'?. And the hot nights?” commented Mrs Kingswich. “ Not every tropical place has hot nights,” I said. _ 1 ‘‘One place I was in for a while (and perhaps some of our troops are there now) used to get a nice breeze about 4 every afternoon. But read something for yourself out of one of my latest medical journals ”; — Mrs Kingswich read: “ For some reason, persons living in temperate climates imagine that the tropics are very hot. Such, of course, is not necessarily the case. Summer temperatures in Perth are far higher than in Batavir. The characteristic of the tropics is that the length of the day varies but slightly or not at all throughout the year.” Wednesday, April 16. “ I hope you don’t mind me ringing you up,” said a worried Mrs Allinby this morning, ‘‘ but I’ve just had a letter from Tom.

Babies In Fashion

“ He’s the one at .boarding school, you know. He says that the school doctor has just told him he can’t play football for a while because he’s got synovitis. It’s a sort of rheumatism, isn’t it?” “ No,” T replied. “ Did he say ho had 'it in the kuco?” “ Just like- a hoy, he doesn’t say anything at all,” said the mother. “Do toll me something about it. Should I bring him •home?” “ Synovitis is just an inflammation of the membrane that lines a joint,” I said. “ It waters, and so it as more commonly called ‘ water on the knee,’ or on whatever joint it happens to be. It’s the same as housemaid’s knee. Students sometimes get it in the elbow point, because they have the habit of sitting with their elbows supporting their head.” , , “ AVili he be all right?” asked the mother. “ I suppose, they can cure it. What will ho have to do?” “It’ll probably get all right ifjic does what he’s told and rests it,” 1 replied. “ 7’erhaps he’ll have to wear a knee-cap hand for a while. I ieel sure it’s the knee in his ease, since ho s specifically debarred from playing loothall.” Thursday, April 17. I find that more of my patients are reporting having given some blood to the Blood Bank—a very good thing, for there are moments when a little extra blood to a wounded man means the difference between life and death. “ Well, I've been along ami given mv precious blood for someone or other’s use.” said _ Marcia Whently cheerfully this morning. “ What no one has bothered to explain is just why this sudden demand for blood has set in. They didn’t want it in the last war, and there wore tens of thousands more men killed and wounded then, so father says.” “ They wanted it badly enough, but ‘ science wasn’t far enough advanced to work out a scheme for storing it and having it handy for immediate use,” I replied. “ Nowadays we can do these things.” “ But why is it so useful to have spare blood around the place?” asked ■Marcia. “ It has boon said that the greatest single factor in death from gunshot and similar wounds is loss of blood,” I replied. “ It’s all very well to find the bullet and remove it, but it’s generally more important to keep the patient alive while you’re looking. A blood transfusion does that.” Among the most valuable war materials that America will be sending England in the very near future is blood. The American Red Cross has just launched what one writer has called “history’s most ambitious plan to save the lives of wounded soldiers.” Over a thousand different Americans a week are giving blood to their British cousins. We lOften talk loosely about our blood ties. Here and now is being forged the greatest and truest i blood tie the world has ever known. Friday, April 18. Eighteen-years-old John Halling’s face was white and tense as he came determinedly enough into the surgery to-night. “ I’ve got a cancer !” he said, and sweat poured out of his brow, ' “ Where?” I said, coming to the point at once. He held out the back of his hand. “ There it is,” he said. “ It’s just starting.” “ It’s not a cancer,” I said definitely, and John suddenly went limp at the knees and sank into the chair. He passed his handkerchief over his face. “ You’ve been worrying about it a bit?” I suggested. “ I haven’t slept for a week,” he said. “ That’s when I noticed it first. 1 was scared to tell mother and dad. I was too scared to tell anyone. His voice choked a little. I patted him on the shoulder. “ I thought I was done for,” he said. “ You’ve got a little cyst,” I said. “ They’re quite common. Feel it very gently yith your finger tip and you’ll notice it feels like fluid underneath. That’s all it is. It’ll probably disappear one day, though if it worries you a lot, which I don’t think for a moment it will, we’ll do something about dissecting it out.” „ They used to get rid of these things by banging them with the family Bible in grandpa’s day. It wasn’t such a bad treatment, as old-fashioned methods went. Names in this Diary are fictitious. Copyright.