A DOCTOR'S REMINISCENCES.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 41, 3 October 1911, Page 3

A DOCTOR'S REMINISCENCES.

Some very interesting reminiscences wore contributed to the Medical Congress in Sydney hy Dr. Charles Iredell, who claimed that ho had been practising as an ear, nose, and throat specialist longer than any other British doctor. Not that he everything. “Everyone is either a fool or a. doctor at the age of 40,” he once said to a lady patient. “I suppose it is possible to be both,” she replied quietly. Dr. Iredell gave several proofs of the advancement of surgery during the last thirty years or so. Until lf?SI, the treatment of post nasal growths had not been given much attention. So serious and rare was this kind of operation' that a German professor was specially brought over from Germany to operate on a Harrow hoy, at a fee of 500 guineas. Six other medical men were there hy invitation. Dr. Iredell describes the scene as serio-comic. The unfortunate hoy was lashed hy his arms and legs to a chair, and an elaborate gag was fastened to his head. The operation is a common one now, and it is a good thing for all concerned that such preparations are not necessary. As a curious illustration of the extreme conservatism on the part of patients, Dr. Iredell mentioned that in the year before he came out to Australia (1885), when ho was taking charge of Dr. Dalby’s practice in London in that doctor’s absence in Scotland, a “very line old gentleman” of SO called, and the usual regrets having been made that Dr. Dalny should he away, the patient said: “My dear sir, yon need make no excuses. I don’t know Mr Dalny; I never heard of Mr Dalhy; but I came to this house fifty years ago as a patient of Mr Toynbee, and I thought it might still be an aurist’s house.” Dr. Iredell said the one great disappointment in aural work was the little advance made in the construction of instrumental assistance to hearing. The acoustic difficulties seemed at present to he insurmountable. Practically not one deaf person in a thousand would habitually use any known contrivance. They would purchase them, try them, and put them on one side. He knew of deaf people whose homes were stocked with these things—discarded. The apparently paradoxical tiling about it was that the better the instrument enabled the patient to hoar the more trying did it . become to the user.