Doctor in Love by Richard Gordon Read Free Book Online Page B

an orange-pip impacted in a parotid duct,” he whispered helpfully as we went in.
    I was directed to Professor Surridge, who turned out to be a little pink fat bald man, giving the impression of just having been lifted from a pan of boiling water.
    “Well, Doctor,” he said genially, passing me a large bottle. “What’s that?”
    “It could be an orange-pip impacted in a parotid duct, sir.”
    “Indeed it could,” he agreed. “But it is a cherry-stone impacted in an appendix. Both rare conditions, eh?” He handed me an odd-looking syringe. “What would you use that for?”
    “Syringing ears, sir?” I suggested.
    “Better than the last candidate, at least, Doctor. He wanted to inject piles with it. Actually, it’s from Clover’s chloroform apparatus. Historical interest, of course. Now let us discuss the anatomy of the appendix and its various aberrant positions.”
    I soon felt I was doing well. I fumbled an answer about the course of the appendicular artery, and I made a slight error over the muscular structure of the intestinal wall, but if my own critical standards equalled those of the Royal College of Surgeons I thought that this time I should be through.
    “You are familiar with Poupart’s ligament?” asked the Professor, as we got on to hernias.
    “Of course, sir.”
    “Ah! But where is Poupart’s junction?”
    For a second I felt panic. This was an anatomical feature I’d never heard of.
    “It’s the next station to Clapham Junction,” he said with a chuckle. “Truly, Doctor. Have a look at the signal box the next time you go to Brighton. And which hospital do you come from, Doctor?” He leaned back in his chair, looking at me benignly.
    “St Swithin’s, sir,” I said, smiling back.
    “Of course, you know how to tell the difference between a Guy’s man and a St Swithin’s man, don’t you, Doctor?”
    “No, sir?” I realized with added excitement that the oral period must be almost over; at last I seemed to have got a toe on the surgical ladder.
    “They say a Guy’s man always examines his patients with a hand in his pocket,” the Professor continued, laughing.
    I laughed, too.
    “And they say a St Swithin’s man always examines his patients with both hands in his pockets,” he went on, laughing heartily.
    I threw back my head and roared.
    A bell tinkled in the distance. “By the way,” said the Professor. “What’s the dose of morphine?”

7
    “It was a pity about your Primary,” said Dr Farquarson.
    We were sitting together in his consulting-room, which like those of all best British doctors had the air of a Victorian gentleman’s study and exhibited nothing much more clinical than a bust of Edward Jenner. I had just arrived at Hampden Cross, a pleasant place on the edge of London’s saucer, which had once flourished as the last stop for stage coaches but had long ago been overtaken by their destination. Away from the new by-pass it had the cheerfully inconvenient air of any other busy little English town, with the pedestrians and the traffic struggling for possession of the High Street. But there was fortunately an area of quiet grass and gardens near the Abbey, where Dr Farquarson’s surgery was contained in a narrow Georgian house. I was relieved to find such agreeable surroundings, as I was likely to spend the rest of my life in them.
    “All these higher examinations are a bit of a gamble, I’d say, if that’s any consolation,” Dr Farquarson went on. “I remember when I took the Edinburgh Membership the clinical hinged on whether you could just feel the tip of the patient’s spleen or not. Even the examiners disagreed over it. One failed all the candidates who said they could, and the other failed all the ones who said they couldn’t. I happened to be in the unlucky bunch.” He scraped out his pipe with the old scalpel he kept on his desk for the purpose. “Still, it’s better to have studied and lost than never to have learnt anything at all.