Richard Gordon: DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE

I sat alone in the corner and fingered my tie. They always made the candidates arrive too early, and the coffee would delay them further. There was nothing to do except wait patiently and think about something well removed from the unpleasant quarter of an hour ahead, such as rugby or the lady student's legs. Suddenly the door was flung open and a wild-eyed youth strode in.

'It's not too bad!' he exclaimed breathlessly to the nonchalant fellow. The two apparently came from the same hospital.

'I had Sir Rollo Doggert and Stanley Smith,' he said with a touch of pride. This brought a nod of appreciation from all of us, as they were known as two of the toughest examiners in London.

'Doggert started off by asking me the signs and symptoms of pink disease,' he continued. 'Luckily I knew that as I had happened to look it up last night…'

'Pink disease!' cried the worried man. 'My God, I forgot about that!'

'So I saw at once the way to handle him was to talk man-to-man, you know-none of this servile business, he much prefers to be stood up to. I reeled off pink disease and he said very good, my lad, very good.'

'Did he ask you anything else?' his friend said anxiously.

'Oh yes. He said, supposing I was out golfing with a diabetic who collapsed at the third tee, what would I do? Well, I said…'

The visitor gave a description of this examination in detail, like the man who comes out of the dentist's surgery and insists on telling the occupants of the waiting-room his experiences on the excuse that none of the frightful things that can happen really hurt.

The raconteur was stopped short by the porter. He marshalled us into line outside the heavy door of the examination room. There was a faint ting of a bell inside. The door opened and he admitted us one at a time, directing each to a different table.

You go to table four,' the porter told me.

The room was the one we had written the papers in, but it was now empty except for a double row of baize-covered tables separated by screens. At each of these sat two examiners and a student who carried on a low earnest conversation with them, like a confessional.

I stood before table four. I didn't recognize the examiners. One was a burly, elderly man like a retired prize-fighter who smoked a pipe and was writing busily with a pencil in a notebook; the other was invisible, as he was occupied in reading the morning's Times. _

'Good morning, sir,' I said.

Neither of them took any notice. After a minute the burly fellow looked up from his writing and silently indicated the chair in front of him. I sat down. He growled.

'I beg your pardon, sir?' I said politely.

'I said you're number 306?' he said testily. 'That's correct, I suppose?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Well, why didn't you say so? How would you treat a case of tetanus?'

My heart leapt hopefully. This was something I knew, as there had recently been a case in St. Swithin's.

I started off confidently, reeling out the lines of treatment and feeling much better.

The examiner suddenly cut me short.

'All right, all right,' he said impatiently, 'you seem to know that. A girl of twenty comes to you complaining of gaining weight. What do you do?'

This was the sort of question I disliked. There were so many things one could do my thoughts jostled into each other like a rugger scrum and became confused and unidentifiable.

I-I would ask if she was pregnant,' I said.

'Good God, man! Do you go about asking all the girls you know if they're pregnant? What hospital d'you come from?'

'St. Swithin's, sir,' I said, as though admitting an illegitimate parentage.

'I should have thought so! Now try again.'

I rallied my thoughts and stumbled through the answer. The examiner sat looking past me at the opposite wall, acknowledging my presence only by grunting at intervals.

The bell rang and I moved into the adjoining chair, facing _The Times._ The newspaper rustled and was set down, revealing a mild, youngish-looking man in large spectacles with a perpetual look of faint surprise on his face. He looked at me as if he was surprised to see me there, and every answer I made was received with the same expression. I found this most disheartening.

The examiner pushed across the green baize a small sealed glass pot from a pathology museum, in which a piece of meat like the remains of a Sunday joint floated in spirit.

'What's that?' he asked.

I picked up the bottle and examined it carefully. By now I knew the technique for pathological specimens of this kind. The first thing to do was turn them upside down, as their identity was often to be found on a label on the bottom. If one was still flummoxed one might sneeze or let it drop from nervous fingers to smash on the floor.

I upturned it and was disappointed to find the label had prudently been removed. Unfortunately there was so much sediment in the jar that it behaved like one of those little globes containing an Eiffel Tower that on reversal cover the model with a thick snowstorm. I could therefore not even see the specimen when I turned it back again.

'Liver,' I tried.

'What!' exclaimed the surprised man. The other examiner, who had returned to his writing, slammed down his pencil in disgust and glared at me.

'I mean lung,' I corrected.

'That's better. What's wrong with it?'

I could get no help from the specimen, which was still tossing in swirling white particles, so I took another guess.

'Pneumonia. Stage of white hepatization.'

The surprised man nodded. 'How do you test diphtheria serum?' he demanded.

'You inject it into a guinea-pig, sir.'

'Yes, but you've got to have an animal of a standard weight, haven't you?'

'Oh yes…a hundred kilogrammes.'

The two men collapsed into roars of laughter.

'It would be as big as a policeman, you fool!' shouted the first examiner.

'Oh, I'm so sorry,' I stammered miserably. 'I mean a hundred milligrammes.'

The laughter was renewed. Ors or two of the examiners at nearby tables looked up with interest. The other candidates felt like prisoners in the condemned block when they hear the bolt go in the execution shed.

'You could hardly see it then, boy,' said the surprised man, wiping his eyes. 'The creature weighs a hundred grammes. However, we will leave the subject. How would you treat a case of simple sore throat?'

'I would give a course of sulphonamide, sir.'

'Yes, that's right.'

'I disagree with you, Charles,' the other interrupted forcibly. 'It's like taking a hammer at a nut. I have an excellent gargle I have been prescribing for years which does very well.'

'Oh, I don't know,' said the surprised fellow warmly. 'One must make use of these drugs. I've always had excellent results with sulphonamides.'

'Did you read that paper by McHugh in the _Clinical Record_ last winter?' demanded the first examiner, banging the table again.

'Certainly I read it, George. And the correspondence which followed. Nevertheless, I feel it is still open to doubt-'

'I really cannot agree with you-'

They continued arguing briskly, and were still doing so when a second tinkle of the bell allowed me to slide out and rush miserably into the street.

The days after the viva were black ones. It was like having a severe accident. For the first few hours I was numbed, unable to realize what had hit me. Then I began to wonder if I would ever make a recovery and win through. One or two of my friends heartened me by describing equally depressing experiences that had overtaken them previously and still allowed them to pass. I began to hope. Little shreds of success collected together and weaved themselves into a triumphal garland. After all, I thought, I got the bottle right, and I knew about tetanus…then I forgot about it in my anxiety over the last section of the examination, the clinical.