Richard Gordon: DOCTOR AT LARGE

On the bus I opened the Professor's testimonial. It was short:

_To Whom It May Concern

Dr Gordon has been my Casualty House Surgeon for the past three months, in which time he has performed his duties entirely to his satisfaction._

I began to open the _British Medical Journal_ as the Chinese open their newspapers, from the back: the last twenty pages are filled with advertisements for jobs, and I suddenly found myself less concerned over the progress of medical science as a whole than the next source of my own bread and butter.

There were plenty of hospitals advertising for house surgeons in the provinces, so I bought a book of stamps and wrote a dozen elegantly-phrased applications. As I would receive free third-class tickets to attend the interviews I felt that at least I would see something of the country at the National Health Service's expense.

I soon found that I was not a success at interviews. First of all, the waiting-rooms upset me. Before an oral examination, a group of students enjoy the deep, sad comradeship of a bunch of prisoners awaiting the firing squad, but when a job is being decided the atmosphere in the ante-room is more like a lifeboat with the food and water running low. Although none of the candidates could have wanted work more urgently than myself, I always reached the empty chair at the foot of the committee table with subconscious feelings of guilt. This made me always say the wrong things, find difficulty in knowing what to do with my hands, fiddle with my tie, break pencils in two, and tear the sheet of pink blotting-paper into little bits.

I went through several interviews, though now they are as indistinguishable in my mind as different visits to the dentist's. They were all held in hospital board-rooms, containing a fireplace crammed with coal, three portraits of men in frock-coats suffering from obesity and hypertension, the hospital reports since 1840 bound in red leather, a bust of Hippocrates in the corner, and black panels of donations recording in gold leaf how ennobled local manufactured cast their bread upon waters with reliable tides. In the middle of the room was a mahogany table that looked strong enough to support a tank, round which sat a dozen of the most intimidating people I had seen in my life.

It was important to decide on entering the room which of the committee were doctors and which were lay governors, in order to tune the pitch of each reply correctly-there was no point in giving a clinical examination answer to a wholesale draper in his best suit. At one of my earlier interviews I was asked solemnly by a man in a clerical collar. 'What would you do, Doctor, if you were operating alone at midnight and suddenly produced an unstoppable haemorrhage?'

Feeling sure of myself, I replied, 'Pray to God for guidance, sir.'

A small man on my right stirred. 'Don't you think, young fellow,' he said quietly, 'you might ring up a consultant surgeon before calling on the advice of an unqualified practitioner?'

I didn't get the job.

Some of the committees wanted to know if I played cricket, others if I played the piano; some if I were married, or if I were moral; one chairman asked my politics, another the names of my clubs. Whatever answers I gave never seemed to be the right ones: there was always a sharp silence, a slight 'Oh!' from somewhere, and the chairman was thanking me very much and saying they would let me know in due course. My saddest discovery of all was that an education at St Swithin's did not automatically waft you to the head of the profession on the sweeping bows of your colleagues. We had been brought up to assume the same relationship to the graduates of other hospitals as Sherlock Holmes to Watson, and it was a shock to find someone who had never heard of the place.

'What's your hospital, lad?' demanded one florid, fat surgeon, who held the degree of a northern medical school never mentioned in our wards.

'St Swithin's, sir.'

'Ee, lad, you'll live it down,' he said, and everyone roared with laughter.

This was too much, even at an interview. 'I might say, sir,' I declared indignantly, 'that I am extremely proud of the fact. At least, they say you can always tell a St Swithin's man.'

'Aye, lad, and you can't tell him anything.'

I didn't get that job either.

After a disheartening month of cold train journeys I began to feel worried. I no longer faced the problem of finding a befitting start to my surgical career, but of keeping myself alive and fed. I had four pounds ten in the bank, one suit, a bag of golf clubs, a roll of minor surgical instruments, and a small plaster bust of Lord Litter., I lived in a furnished room in Muswell Hill, the weather, was wet and icy, all my shoes needed repairing, I always seemed hungry, and my depressing circumstances made me want to drink twice as much as usual. My microscope had been sacrificed long ago, and my skeleton lay in a pawnbroker's near St Swithin's, whose cellars must have resembled the catacombs after a plague year.

The only objects of value left were my text-books. I looked at them, packing my landlady's cheap bookcase with their plump smooth backs and rich gold lettering, like a hungry tramp eyeing a flock of geese. For a week I resisted temptation. Then I decided that there were two or three volumes on subjects like public health and biochemistry that a rising surgeon could do without. Later I unashamedly took the lot, one after the other, to the second-hand medical bookshop in Gower Street, saying at every meal a grace to its provider. Whitby and Britton's _Disorders of the Blood_ gave only bacon and eggs and coffee in a teashop; but Price's _Text-book of the Practice of Medicine_ was much more nutritious, and ran to tomato soup, steak and chips, a pint of beer, and apple tart. I saved up Gray's _Anatomy_ for my birthday, and when I at last carried _The Encyclopaedia of Surgical Practice_ downstairs I booked a table at Scott's.

Soon I had nothing left but a few _Students' Aid_ handbooks, _What to do in Cases of Poisoning,_ and _A Table of Food Values,_ which together would hardly have risen to tea and sandwiches. I therefore set out to my next interview, at a large hospital in Northumberland, determined to win the job. I stood in the waiting-room staring out of the window, trying to forget the other candidates; I marched into the committee room, clasped my hands under the table, and answered all the questions like an efficient policeman in court. This time I had the whole length of the table to myself with the committee in a line, opposite, which somehow increased my confidence. I felt I was doing well, particularly when the tall surgeon in the corner who had been asking most of the questions nodded after investigating my career at St Swithin's, and said, 'That seems all very satisfactory. And you really mean to go in for surgery, do you?'

'Most certainly, sir,' I answered promptly. 'However much personal hardship it means at first, that's always been my ambition.'

'Excellent. That's the spirit I like to see in my house surgeons. Don't you agree, gentlemen?'

A heartening volley of grunts came across the table.

'Very well,' the surgeon said. 'Now Dr Bryce-Derry, our Chairman, will ask you a few routine questions.'

The Chairman, who sat immediately opposite me, was a pleasant-looking, youngish man in a tweed suit, a check shirt, and a homespun tie.

'Now, Dr Gordon,' he started with a smile. 'You're certain you really want to work in our hospital?'

'Yes, sir.'

His smile vanished. His lips tightened.

'You have been qualified a little over three months, I believe?'

'Yes, sir.'

He paused. He glared at me.

'You are a member of the Medical Defence Union, I take it?' he went on slowly.

'Oh, definitely, sir.'

I felt bewildered. There was suddenly an odd atmosphere in the room. All the committee members were either looking at the ceiling or staring hard on to their squares of blotting-paper. Nobody spoke.