Copyright & Information

Doctor On The Boil

 

First published in 1970

© Richard Gordon; House of Stratus 1970-2012

 

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

 

The right of Richard Gordon to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

 

This edition published in 2012 by House of Stratus, an imprint of

Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Fore Street, Looe,

Cornwall, PL13 1AD, UK.

 

Typeset by House of Stratus.

 

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.

 

 

This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author’s imagination.

Any resemblance or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.

 

 

www.houseofstratus.com

About the Author

 

Richard Gordon, real name Dr. Gordon Stanley Ostlere, was born in England on 15 September 1921. He is best-known for his hilarious ‘Doctor’ books. Himself a qualified doctor, he worked as an anaesthetist at the famous St. Bartholomew’s Hospital (where he was also a medical student) and later as a ship’s surgeon, before leaving medical practice in 1952 to take up writing full time. Many of his books are based on his own true experiences in the medical profession and are all told with the wry wit and candid humour that have become his hallmark.

In all, there are eighteen titles in the Doctor Series, with further comic writings in another seven volumes, including ‘Great Medical Disasters’ and ‘Great Medical Mysteries’, plus more serious works concerning the lives of medical practitioners.

He has also published several technical books under his own name, mainly concerned with anaesthetics for both students and patients. Additionally, he has written on gardening, fishing and cricket and was also a regular contributor to Punch magazine. His ‘Private Lives’ series, taking in Dr. Crippen, Jack the Ripper and Florence Nightingale, has been widely acclaimed.

The enormous success of Doctor in the House, first published in the 1950’s, startled its author. It was written whilst he was a surgeon aboard a cargo ship, prior to a spell as an academic anaesthetist at Oxford. His only previous literary experience had been confined to work as an assistant editor of the British Medical Journal. There was, perhaps, a foretaste of things to come whilst working on the Journal as the then editor, finding Gordon somewhat jokey, put him in charge of the obituaries!

The film of Doctor in the House uniquely recovered its production costs whilst still showing at the cinema in London’s West End where it had been premiered. This endeared him to the powerful Rank Organisation who made eight films altogether of his works, which were followed by a then record-breaking TV series, and further stage productions.

Richard Gordon’s books have been translated into twenty languages.

He married a doctor and they had four children, two of whom became house surgeons. He now lives in London.

 

1

Across the main hall of St Swithin’s Hospital, worn by generations of distinguished doctors and the patients who made them so, on a fine morning in early May two young men in short white jackets were ambling towards the plate-glass front doors.

‘Why do you always do it in the spring, Terry?’ asked Ken Kerrberry, the taller and more assured. ‘It’s so unoriginal. Just like getting flu in January.’

‘But Ken, I tell you this time it’s for real.’ Terry Summerbee was dark-haired and wiry, with a ready smile.

‘Let’s recap, now. The spring before last you were really in love with that well-vatted physiotherapist who treated your strained quadriceps–’

‘Could you blame anyone for going after a bird rhythmically massaging her way up your thigh to a tape of Strauss waltzes?’

‘Last spring it was that little redhead in the refectory. At least she used to give you double helpings of chips. Well, what’s this year’s model look like?’

Terry hesitated. ‘I don’t want it to get round. There might be too much competition.’

‘I swear professional secrecy, by the sphincter of Hippocrates.’

‘What about you yourself?’ Terry asked suspiciously.

‘You know I’m already being drained of energy by that girl from TV–’

‘All right. Mine’s called Stella Gray. She’s that new blonde one down in X-ray. Perhaps you’ve noticed her?’

‘Noticed her? You might ask if I’d noticed Cleopatra turning up to take our see-through pictures. But my dear Terry–’ He laid a fatherly hand on his companion’s shoulder. ‘I do implore you, forget it.’

‘Oh? Trying to put me off? Then you are after her–’

‘No, no! But she’s right out of your class.’

‘Thanks. A nice friendly remark.’

‘You’re right. It is. To start with, her father’s a millionaire–’

‘Yes, it’s all round the hospital. He’s in polymer resins, though don’t ask me what anyone could possibly want them for.’

‘She’s jet set. We aren’t even off the ground. She’s been around – St Tropez, Nassau, Nepal. You name it, she’s revelled in it. She won’t look at mere medical students, I assure you. Even housemen and registrars are liable to get their fingers frozen.’

‘I happen to know she’s melting in my direction. As for the money, that doesn’t make the slightest difference to me.’

‘Personally, I can’t understand what she’s doing in a dump like this at all.’

‘She has a sense of vocation and she’s keen on photography.’

‘You take my advice and leave her playing happily among the barium enemas.’

‘I intend to ask her out,’ Terry said firmly.

Ken laughed. ‘That’ll set you back. It’s no good trying to fob her off with a bag of crisps and a trip up the Post Office Tower, you know. And don’t forget, mate – the dean’s little class examination in medicine strikes on Monday week. If you fail it’s back six months, and no excuses. We won’t be able to talk him round this time. You know what a mood the old dear has been in the last few weeks – twice as dithery and half as connable.’

‘Relaxation is the best preparation for both childbirth and examinations,’ Terry told him smugly.

They had reached the front doors, giving on to a broad flight of stone steps and the courtyard, in which some half-dozen grimy-looking plane trees were struggling into bud. The courtyard itself was separated from the road by a line of stout iron railings, pierced by gates flanked by two brick pillars. The pair watched with idle curiosity as a Rolls-Royce swung through the gates and came to a halt at the foot of the steps. Their feelings turned to surprise as the occupant got out, parking in that spot being strictly forbidden even for the dean. They turned to frank alarm with a better view of the driver. The two young men stood wide-eyed and open-mouthed as a tall, burly figure dressed outlandishly in a knickerbocker suit of gingerish tweed, on his head a deerstalker cap, on his face an aggressive beard, came stamping determinedly up the steps.

‘It can’t be!’ Terry gasped. ‘I never believed he really existed.’

‘It’s like meeting the griffin or some other fabubus beast,’ exclaimed Ken.

‘If you ask me, more likely the abominable snowman–’

‘You! You two. You would be medical students, would you not?’

‘Y–yes, sir.’

‘I thought as much.’

Sir Lancelot Spratt, FRCS, stood stroking his beard, transfixing them with the glare that, until his retirement, had impaled generations of St Swithin’s men with surgical efficiency.

‘Are you familiar with the writings of the seventeenth-century English philosopher, Thomas Hobbes?’

‘Not intimately familiar, sir,’ said Ken, the braver of the two.

‘He described the life of prehistoric man as poor, nasty, brutish, and short. I have always felt that an apt description of the modern medical student. Stand up, boy!’ he roared. ‘Take your hands out of your pockets. It is not only offensively unaesthetic, but it will give you osteoarthritis of the cervical vertebrae in middle age. What stage have you reached, in what you are pleased to call your education?’

‘Second medical clerking, sir,’ they said hastily together.

‘H’m. Though I suppose you haven’t much time for studies these days? Doubtless you occupy yourselves beating unfortunate policemen over the head with banners at demos. I abhor violence,’ he told them forcefully. ‘I know you’re all hair and high principles, but if you happen to object to the state of the world you were born into, write letters to the newspapers. The pen is mightier than the sword. That is what civilization is all about, though I don’t suppose it had occurred to you.’

‘I’m a pacifist, sir,’ said Terry.

‘They always seem to get into bloodier fights than anyone else. Well, I can’t waste all day with you.’ Sir Lancelot strode into the building. ‘Porter! Where’s that blasted porter? Dozing as usual, I suppose?’

The head of Harry the porter appeared round the glass screen of his lodge. For a moment the man’s expression suggested he saw St Peter himself, impatiently rattling his keys. But having kept his job for twenty years solely through the quickness of his wits, his gnarled face assumed a smile as he said, ‘It’s Sir Lancelot! What a surprise. I’m real pleased to see you again, sir.’

‘You are not pleased to see me at all,’ the surgeon informed him. ‘You omitted to pay over my winnings from the very last bet I asked you to place for me, at Kempton Park on the afternoon I retired.’

‘Did I, sir?’ He looked aghast. ‘It must have slipped my memory, being so upset at you leaving us–’

‘Don’t blather, man. Is the dean in?’

‘His board says so, sir.’

‘Good. Well, follow me. Jump to it. I never move about this place without an escort. And what are those trolleys doing hanging about in the main corridor? Get them tidied away immediately. The patients don’t want to walk into the place and be reminded they might be pushed out of it.’ His eye fell on a notice board. ‘And kindly remove that Ministry poster saying, “We want Your Blood”. Could easily be taken wrongly by nervous patients. Good grief, nurse – what’s the laundry been doing to your uniform?’

A young blonde nurse stopped dead, regarding him with the same alarm as the two students.

‘I can distinctly see your patellae,’ he told her.

‘Oh! Yes.’ She looked down at her skirt. ‘It’s the new matron, sir. She’s given us permission to shorten our uniforms. To be more fashionable, sir.’

‘I imagined St Swithin’s followed the dictates of Harley Street, not Carnaby Street,’ Sir Lancelot told her loftily. He peered at the bib of her uniform. ‘Is that what’s wrong with you?’

She fingered the metal label. ‘That’s my name, sir. I’m Nurse Smallbones. We all wear them now.’

‘Good grief,’ muttered Sir Lancelot again. ‘You wouldn’t find me agreeing to that. I always preferred to do my duties here in complete anonymity. Please lengthen your clothes, nurse. They are quite immodest. Harry, where are you! I’m off to the dean.’

Rubbing his hands briskly together, as though making for a good dinner or an interesting operating list, Sir Lancelot started down the crowded main corridor like a tank through a cornfield.

The dean’s office was on the ground floor of the medical school, to the far side of the hospital building. Sir Lancelot had reached only half-way, when he pulled up suddenly with a shout of, ‘You!’

‘Good morning, Sir Lancelot,’ said a pleasant faced, curly-haired young man with a small fair moustache, in a long white coat with a stethoscope round his neck. ‘I thought you were still living it up among the geishas? I do hope you had a good time? How was the Taj Mahal by moonlight?’

‘I did not see the Taj Mahal, through indisposition. What the devil are you doing here, Grimsdyke? I thought the hospital had purged itself of you long ago.’

‘I’m doing a locum, for a junior medical registrar who’s on honeymoon.’

‘H’m. Knowing you, it’s a wonder you didn’t offer to be your registrar’s locum on the honeymoon, instead.’

‘I don’t think I’d have enjoyed it much, sir. The registrar’s a she.’

‘Oh…is a junior registrar job the best you can do for yourself? At your age?’

‘Come, sir.’ Grimsdyke pulled the end of his moustache, looking pained. ‘I’m not that old. And these days the seven ages of man seem to be telescoped a bit. There’s only youth and doddering senility.’

Sir Lancelot glared. ‘And which category do I come into, pray? I’m genuinely disappointed you haven’t climbed higher up the medical ladder. Even if the lower rungs are admittedly as crowded as Oxford Street during the sales – with the same ruthless elbowing going on, too. Not content with having been our oldest student, you want to be our oldest junior doctor. If your ambition’s simply to become the Peter Pan of the medical profession, I suppose it’s your affair.’

‘I have other interests, sir,’ Grimsdyke informed him.

‘Medical moonlighting, eh? There’s plenty of it about – struggling doctors working all week-end so that prosperous middle-aged ones can play golf. To be expected, I suppose, with the disgraceful rates of junior hospital pay.’

‘I took this job as a refresher-course, really. One does get so terribly out-of-date. Now I know why I kept failing my finals – I was a student so long, all the treatment I was taught at the beginning had by then been discovered as highly dangerous.’

‘Well, keep out of my hair, anyway.’

‘But surely, sir, you’ve retired–’

‘We’ll see about that,’ Sir Lancelot told him shortly. ‘I mustn’t keep the dean waiting any longer. I told the fellow I’d be here an hour ago.’

2

Dr Lionel Lychfield, Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and dean of St Swithin’s Medical School, was a little man with a bald pointed head, large pointed ears and a lined brow, resembling a short-tempered garden gnome. He was nervous and jumpy at the best of times, though inclined to be vague and forgetful – had he chosen to be a surgeon rather than a physician, much of the contents of his operating theatre would assuredly have finished up inside his patients. His awareness in the past week that Sir Lancelot was not only back in England but intending to call at St Swithin’s had made him jumpier and shorter-tempered than ever. That morning, he could hardly bring himself to leave his house. But a letter waiting on his hospital desk put all thought of Sir Lancelot, or of anything else at all, clean out of his mind.

He sat on the edge of a high-backed leather chair in an office lined with mahogany cases of leather-bound books, decorated with busts of Plato and Lord Lister and a handsomely-framed reproduction of Luke Fildes’ picture The Doctor. The letter which had so affected him lay alone on the blotter. The dean bounced gently, hands clasped tightly under his chin, staring fixedly at the handwriting and the torn envelope marked ‘Strictly personal’. He read it yet again, with delight undimmed by familiarity.

It was addressed from the Garlick Club in St Martin’s Lane, one of the most aloof in London. Its message was simply:

 

Dear Lionel,

Keep your nose clean!

Yours,

Willie.

 

‘So it’s all fixed!’ The dean’s eyes glowed behind his large round glasses. ‘It just shows how useful it is, cultivating the right sort of friends in the right sort of places. Not what you know but who you know brings success. How alarming to think that applies even in medicine.’

He read it through again, as though the few words had some cryptic meaning so far eluding him. He drew a sheet of writing-paper from the rack, and pencilled on it, ‘Sir Lionel Lychfield’. He looked at it admiringly, then added ‘KBE’.

‘Good morning, Sir Lionel,’ he said to himself. ‘How do you do, Sir Lionel? Your car is waiting, Sir Lionel. Is that Sir Lionel Lychfield speaking? Now students, three cheers for Sir Lionel…’

He added underneath, ‘Lord Lychfield’. Feeling it looked elegant, he added, ‘The Earl of Lychfield’. With a smile he went on, ‘His Grace the Duke of Lychfield’.

‘No knowing where these honours might stop, once one gets started,’ he muttered, pencilling in ‘HM King Lionel I.’

The door opened. ‘Ah, Dean. Good to see you.’

The dean jumped up, cramming paper and letter as a ball into his jacket pocket.

‘My…my dear Lancelot. I had quite forgotten you were coming.’

‘Oh? You had my cable from New Delhi?’

‘Yes, I’m sure I did… I’m afraid for the moment my mind was on other things. You see, I heard only this morning with much gratification that I am shortly to be–’

He stopped, horrified at his indiscretion. He was vague about the protocol, but he felt that leakage of the glad news would so upset Her Majesty the honour would automatically be cancelled. The word ‘knighthood’ had only to drop from his lips for his cup of happiness to be snatched away from them.

‘I am shortly to be…to be…’ he said unhappily.

‘Good grief, you haven’t put Josephine in the family way again at your age?’

The dean shook his head. ‘To be given a free introductory lesson at a dancing school.’

‘That hardly seems a cause for jubilation, I must say.’

‘How was the Far East?’ the dean went on hastily.

‘Bloody.’

‘Oh. Did you see the Taj Mahal by moonlight?’

‘I did not see the Taj Mahal at all.’ They both sat down. Crossing one knickerbockered leg over the other, Sir Lancelot observed, ‘You’ve still got that ghastly sentimental picture by Fildes on the wall, I see. You know it was described by our late professional colleague and playwright James Bridie as depicting “a middle-aged man scratching his beard and wondering what the devil is the matter with a sick child he is expected to cure”?’

‘I happen to like it.’

‘I must say, Dean, I expected a rather more substantial welcoming committee. After all, I have been away from the hospital for some time.’

‘Several members of the consultant staff have gone unexpectedly on holiday.’

‘But they knew perfectly well I was coming.’ The dean said nothing. ‘That, I presume, is why they went unexpectedly on holiday? Well, I can only hope it keeps fine for them. Professor Bingham’s here?’

The dean smiled. ‘I don’t think our new professor of surgery ever takes a holiday. Young and keen, you know. Bags of drive and energy. An excellent choice for the job.’

I bet that keenness is spilling a few basinsful of unnecessary blood, Sir Lancelot thought. But he said nothing. He was a fair man, who never made a professionally slighting remark behind others’ backs. To their faces, of course, he allowed himself to be as colourfully offensive as possible.

‘I gather from the newspapers you and young Bingham are in cahoots over this transplant business?’

‘I am the physician, and he is the surgeon heading the team, certainly,’ said the dean guardedly. ‘A very good team, too. We have had some excellent results.’

‘Yes, your last picture in the papers looked as though you’d just won the Cup Final.’

The dean looked offended. ‘It is the surgery of the future.’

‘In my old-fashioned view, we would be better employed trying to perfect the surgery of the past. My dear Dean! These surgical fashions – I’ve seen them come and go, like women’s hats and skirts. Once we used to fill the patients up with liquid paraffin until they leaked. We tried to remove every organ compatible with the continuance of life, for every complaint from constipation to mother-fixation. After that, we invented the floating kidney, and lashed down everything inside the abdomen like deck-cargo in a storm. Do you remember the septic focus, Dean? I never saw one, quite honestly, but I seemed to have removed several hundred of the nasty little things. That was at the end of the war, when we thought they caused every bodily condition possible except pregnancy. Then we all forgot about them – I fancy because of the horrifying distraction of Nye Bevan with his National Health Service–’

‘Where are you staying in London?’ asked the dean. Sir Lancelot’s reminiscences, though authoritative and captivating, quickly grew impregnable to interruption.

‘I booked a room at the Crécy. I’ll drive round later.’ Sir Lancelot pulled a large red-and-white spotted handkerchief from his pocket and coughed into it.

‘I only wish I could offer you hospitality. Josephine and I would be absolutely delighted if you could stay with us. Absolutely delighted! But we’re quite full, right to the eaves. There’s not only Miss MacNish, but now we’ve an au pair girl from Sweden, and the only spare bedroom the two children use for studying.’

Sir Lancelot grunted. ‘How are your kids, anyway?’

The dean’s expression, so far in the conversation resembling a man in the dentist’s waiting for the drill to hit the nerve, relaxed into a proud smile. ‘Muriel won the gold medal in anatomy, and George has got through his second MB – admittedly after one or two tries he is never at his best in examinations, being a somewhat nervous lad. So both have started work in our wards.’

The dean’s fingers, feeling idly in his pocket, discovered a ball of crumpled paper. Mystified, he drew it out and spread it across the blotter. He read the message, hastily screwed it up and pocketed it again. ‘To what must we be grateful for this – er, brief visit?’ he asked Sir Lancelot, who was staring at him with raised eyebrows.

The surgeon helped himself to a pinch of snuff. ‘I am here for two reasons. Firstly, I have a cough.’

‘Oh? I’m sorry.’

‘It’s not frequent. Worse in the mornings. No haemoptysis, or anything sinister like that. It came on towards the end of my eastern tour. That’s what prevented me from seeing the Taj Mahal – it seemed best not to risk the expedition, and anyway you can always look at the place on picture-postcards. I don’t think I’ve anything serious. But of course, one must have any persistent cough investigated.’

‘Most certainly.’

‘So I’ve come to you. You’re a member of the physicians’ union. I’m a surgeon, and therefore know nothing whatever about the chest, except as a convenient shelf for your instruments while you’re operating.’

‘My dear Lancelot, of course I’ll do what I can.’ The dean was flooded with the sympathy of all medical men towards others undergoing the indignity of being ill themselves. ‘Come up to my ward after lunch. I’ll examine you and fix up X-rays and so forth, if necessary. There’s a side-room empty at the moment, getting ready for the class examinations on Monday week.’ He rubbed his hands. ‘I’m really going to stretch the little blighters this time. There’s been far too much slacking in the medical school lately, nothing but girls, poker, and electric guitars.’

‘That’s very good of you,’ said Sir Lancelot amicably. ‘My second reason is another complaint, one from which the whole world suffers. Boredom.’

The dean gave a sigh, drumming his fingers lightly on the desk. ‘It is the blessing of our arduous profession, the unending flow of interesting work.’

‘Exactly,’ Sir Lancelot agreed firmly. ‘As you know, I retired prematurely. At the height of my powers. But I felt I’d done my bit for both humanity and the tax-collector. I wanted to enjoy my country house in Wales. Perhaps it was selfish of me.’

‘All of us here thought it an estimable idea,’ the dean assured him warmly.

‘Then of course my poor wife died. Now I’m lonely. One can fish only during the season. One cannot continually orbit the earth as a tourist. As an Englishman, I would not presume to interest myself in local politics, and anyway they are totally impossible to comprehend. I need an object in life.’

The dean nodded. ‘They say philately can be most interesting. Or the collecting of butterflies and moths. Possibly bird-watching? Or pot-holing?’

‘My dear Dean.’ Sir Lancelot rose, with his hands behind his back, starting slowly to pace the room. ‘You are of course familiar with the charter of our distinguished hospital?’

‘Granted by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the First,’ the dean recited fondly. ‘I have often studied the original parchment. Quite awesome how its terms still govern much of our life here.’

‘Quite awesome.’ Sir Lancelot paused to cough. ‘Then you will remember that the hospital’s physicians and surgeons, though retired from active work, are fully entitled to return, to take over the care of such patients in the wards as they feel inclined to, with no questions asked. Clearly, our founders felt it desirable for the long experience of a retired surgeon never to be wasted–’

‘Lancelot!’ cried the dean.

‘Of course, in those days people were always retiring to serve the Queen or explore the American colonies–’

‘That right has never been exercised in the entire history of St Swithin’s,’ exclaimed the dean, turning pink.

Sir Lancelot fixed him with his eye. ‘Well, it is now, old cock.’

‘But…but…this is outrageous. Absolutely outrageous. What do you imagine in this day and age the patients would say? Supposing you walked into Professor Bingham’s ward and simply told one of them that you were going to remove his gallbladder–’

‘As my fees used to be the highest in London, they’d be getting better value for their National Health Insurance stamps.’

The dean slapped his desk-top. ‘I shall have the charter amended.’

‘That’ll need an Act of Parliament. Ask the Prime Minister if you like, though there may possibly be more important things on his mind.’

‘Really, Lancelot, this is most unreasonable of you,’ the dean continued angrily. ‘It’ll raise all manner of problems with the Ministry. And just at the time I particularly want to keep my nose clean because–’

He stopped. ‘Yes?’ demanded Sir Lancelot.

‘I happen to have mislaid my handkerchief. No, no, it’ll never do.’

‘We’ll see about that. Meanwhile, I think I’ll have a prowl round the old place. See you in the ward after lunch. And do provide a decent-sized jar for a specimen, there’s a good chap. From some of the receptacles you physicians produce, you seem to imagine a camel could widdle through the eye of a needle.’