Doctor in Love by Richard Gordon Read Free Book Online

know it?”
    I laughed, and admitted I did.
    “And how’s that idiotic nephew of mine?”
    “Very well, I gather. You know he’s gone to Ireland? He sent me a postcard the other day.” This had shown the main street of a village which seemed to consist of alternate public houses and betting shops. On the back Grimsdyke had scribbled, “Note Irish town planning. Natives friendly, though much addicted to funerals.”
    “Ireland, eh? It’s about time he decided to settle down and place whatever brains he has got at the service of some unfortunate community. And this anatomical effort,” he added, indicating my open books, “would be in aid of the Primary Fellowship examination, I take it?”
    “Yes, I’m afraid so.”
    “Of course, since my day they’ve gone and anglicized the whole anatomical nomenclature,” he went on. “Which is a pity because it gives the medical profession at least the appearance of being educated like gentlemen if they can mouth a few Latin words occasionally. I remember the time I found myself asked to say grace at some luncheon or other. I bowed my head and intoned:
    ‘ Levator labii superioris alaeque nasi , Amen.’ A small muscle in the front of the face, you will recall. No one was any the wiser.” Producing a large gold watch from his waistcoat he added, “Talking of lunch, could you tear yourself away from your studies to listen to me rambling over a meal?” Dr Farquarson enjoyed giving the impression of extreme age, though he could not have been much older than my father. “I might even be able to give you some tips on how to bamboozle the examiners.”
    “Why, I’d be delighted. If we go now we’ll still find a table in the members’ dining-room.”
    “Members’ dining-room, rubbish! We’ll go to a place I know in Holborn. The last thing I want to do is eat looking at a lot of doctors.”
    Dr Farquarson led me to a restaurant in a cellar at the end of a dark alley, in which steaks were cooked on an open fire and customers from the City sat in high-backed chairs like choir-stalls with their bowler hats clustered like bunches of huge black grapes above them.
    “So you’re still going in for surgery?” he asked in the middle of his mutton chops.
    I nodded.
    “These days it’s no good just doing surgery, y’know. The hairs of specialization are split finer than that. In America, so they tell me, they have a man for the right kidney and another man for the left kidney. I always believe a specialist is a fellow who charges more and more for knowing less and less, and if I had my own time over again I’d become an omphologist.”
    I looked puzzled.
    “From the Greek omphos . A specialist in the umbilicus.” Dr Farquarson rarely smiled, but his sandy eyebrows quivered violently whenever he was struck by something amusing. “There can’t be many people smitten by diseases of that particular organ, but on the other hand there can’t be many people who’ve made it their lifelong study. Folk would flock from all over the world. That fellow James Bridie once wrote something about it.” He took another sip from his tankard, “Which brings me to my point. Would you consider going into general practice?”
    “You mean as a temporary measure?”
    “I mean as a permanent measure.” As I said nothing, he went on, “I’ve just changed my pitch. I’ve done a swap with a fellow called McBurney I knew up at the University – he’s had bad luck, poor fellow, going down with the tubercule. So I’m in Hampden Cross now.”
    “You mean north of London?”
    “That’s right. Do you know it? It’s in the so-called green belt, which consists largely of a forest of traffic-signs and petrol pumps. But there’s pleasant enough country nearby, and there’s an old Abbey and a cricket ground to satisfy a man’s spiritual needs. They’re building one of these new town affairs on top of it, so I’ll soon be wanting an assistant – with a view, as they say in the