The Diary of a Doctor Who Tells

Evening Star, Issue 24007, 4 October 1941, Page 3

The Diary of a Doctor Who Tells

Monday, September 29. If there were more businessmen like Andrew "Willson there would be less industrial unrest. Andrew owns a small' show in • our suburb, and the health and welfare of his employees is always a matter of his personal concern. Sometimes he rings me about someone, and sometimes he comes along and talks it over. In any case, there’s always help for the family in which the sickness occurs. He came along to-night. “ It’s a heart I have this day, Doctor,” he said, with his Scotch burr. “ Yon Alec Saunders has let me doon again.” “ Is he on it, or is he just preparing?” I asked. “He’s on it, right enough,” replied Andrew. “ He began on Saturday.” “ Did you notice anything during the week?” I asked. “ Aye,” replied Andrew, “he was restless, and seemed unable to concentrate.” “Where is he now?” I asked. “ His wife just told me he’d arrived at last. He hadn’t been seen for two days before that. I’ll have to dismiss him, won’t I?” He looked "at me a little pleadingly- „ _ ~ „ , “That’s up to you,” I said, and he certainly deserves it. If you can find it in your heart to give him still another chancp, send him round here when he’s better and I’ll talk to him. “ Then I’ll send him to town to see a specialist. He’s a mentally sick man, you know; these dipsomaniacs always are, in my opinion.” Maybe, Doctor,” said Andrew doubtfully. “ But they’re uncommonly selfish and mnst have little thought for their wives and bairns.” He got up a little heavily. “ He’s a brilliant laddie, is Alec, he said, as wo shook hands. “ Perhaps that’s his trouble. Do what you cau for him.” „ , Alec is the sort of person who goes ou a binge every few months; He becomes quite revolting. He has been dismissed from a job already, and has landed in tho police court twice. It is hard to realise that a man of his taste, wit, and education can find pleasure pr escape in such an animal adventure. It comes on him like a fever. There is an incubation period of a few days, an alcqholic fever of three or four days, and. then a convalescence. Only when wo understand it as a definite clinical entity do we have pity for the victim and insist on treatment rather than punishment. It is as well to remember that often more than one treatment is required. A textbook describing dipsomania says:— . . , “It signifies an imperious tendency towards an act or line of conduct which is scarcely, if at all, influenced by judgment, and consists in the ingestion of alcohol. Between times the patient may be entirely abstemious, but on the occurrence of the impulsion he becomes in this respect an automaton.- ' The impulsion is often preceded •by a few days of alteration of disposition.” , , . These people want all the help ana treatment we can give them, especially when they give , signs of the trouble coining on. Tuesday, September 30, Two people told me yesterday that they believed in “ letting Nature take its course.” "Was there ever such rubbish? Let Nature take its course in cancer, diabetes, or other serious disease, and we soon know what the result is. Nature is a cruel jade as far as the individual is concerned. She is interested only in caring for and improving the species, and cares not a jot for the individual. At times she deliberately produces an enormous excess of individual life, knowing full well that hardly any of it will survive for more than a fleeting moment.

The Dipsomaniac

Wednesday, October 1. A very • aggrieved person is that important business man Hartley Harris. Three weeks ago, as he told mo, he was in the best of health and working II hours a s day. Then he went off his appetite. Two days ago he felt feverish and found his throat was “ sore on the outside and not on the inside.” To-day, when he sent for me, he had a headache and a slight earache. He had a temperature, had been sick once or twice, and felt drowsy. “What’s wrong with me, Doc? ” he said. “ I suppose it’s an abscessed tooth, with that rotten swelling over the jaw. It’s spreading to the other side. I suppose the mouth will become infected next.” “ You’ve got the mumps,” I said. “ Don’t be silly,” he said. “ I’m 46.” “ If you were 86 I’d still be prepared to say you’ve got the mumps,” I retorted. “ Well, what do I do about it?” he said. “ You stay in bed till you’re told to get up,” 1 said. “ You’ll only be able to eat easily-swallowed foods, and you can put some fomentations on the swellings. “ I’ll give yon some medicine to ease the pain and reduce the fever. The mumps work themselves out in duo course.” “ How long will that be?” demanded Harris angrily. “ If no complications result, perhaps a few days,” I said. “ But you’d bettor be isolated for about 26 days.” “Like blazes!” said Harris. “I’m a busy man.’ “ So are others,” I replied, “ and they don’t want to catch your mumps.” Mumps come at the end of winter and the beginning of spring. I don’t know why. Thursday, October 2. Wendy’s chicken pox is practically finished, though there are still a few scabs remaining, fortunately no sores have been infected, for wo have seen that she did not scratch them. Perhaps the first stop in treating chicken-pox is to cut the finger-nails very short and to insist on. a scrubbing of the fingers two or three times a day. Wendy is anxious to go back to school, and could not see why she is not allowed (seeing she feels perfectly well), till I explained to her that it would be unfair to risk giving her friends chicken-pox. A number of people are, alas, asking me to give them or their children certificates saying they are fit to cturn to school or work after chickenpox and other infectious conditions. Rightly or wrongly, there are certain quarantine regulations to he observed. I would be a poor sort of citizen if I wilfully agreed to permit someone to return to his school or work knowing he • was likely to cause illness and suffering to those with whom he mixed. Friday, October 3. “But . surely,” protested Mrs Grahame, through her tears,' after I had delivered with heavy heart the verdict of cancer in her boy, “surely it’s impossible for a child of lo to have cancer.” , “ I’m afraid not,” . I said, “especially the type which he has. We’ll see a surgeon this afternoon. Hope is not dead yet.” Wo arc accustomed unconsciously to associate certain ages with certain diseases—the childish fevers and ailments with children, tuberculosis with the twenties and early thirties, high blood-pressure with the forties and fifties, and cancer with middle age and after. . On my visiting list at the moment aro a middle-aged man with mumps, an elderly man with chronic low-grade tuberculosis, a young man with bloodpressure. a boy with cancer, and last—but not least—an old lady suffering with teething, which, in her case, is an impacted wisdom tooth. Names in this diary are fictitious. Copyright.