Doctor at Large

That afternoon I again found myself in a tailor's but this time it was a dark, dusty, devout little shop in Savile Row, where the assistants moved with a funereal tread, everyone spoke in whispers, and the customers were measured in cubicles of dark carved wood like choir-stalls.

'What sort of suit did you have in mind, sir?' asked the old man who was pulling a tape-measure shakily round my middle.

'What's the well-dressed doctor about town wearing these days?'

'You can't go wrong with the black jacket and striped trousers, sir,' he said solemnly. 'A lot of the younger gentlemen in the medical profession are favouring ordinary lounge suits these days, sir. One surgical gentleman I couldn't care to mention even goes so far as'-he dropped his eyes-'tweed, sir.'

'Very well. Black jacket and striped trousers it is.'

_'I am_ glad, sir,' he said. 'I really am. Just like old times, sir.'

I took a bed-sitting-room in Bayswater, and arrived for work in Park Lane the next morning. As I was still wearing my Oxford Street suit even Dr Potter-Phipps' good manners did not prevent a pained look crossing his face when I appeared, as though I were suffering from some exuberant skin disease. 'Perhaps, dear boy,' he suggested, 'you should stay in the background for awhile. Get to know the practice. Would you like to wear a white coat? So easy to get one's clothes messy doing clinical tests with strange apparatus.'

For a week I spent my time in the small laboratory converted from a bathroom, performing medical-student pathology at five guineas a go. Then my black jacket and striped trousers arrived, and I was allowed to try my hand at Park Lane medicine. I started at the top: my first patient was a Duke.

During the morning Potter-Phipps hurried into the laboratory, where I was preparing blood samples. For the first time I saw him looking worried.

'A terrible thing has happened, dear boy,' he announced. I prepared to hear that someone had dropped dead in the waiting-room. 'It's my morning to visit old Skye and Lewis, and now this damn film actress has gone and got laryngitis. Which one shall I go to?'

He paced the floor, trying to solve this grave therapeutic problem.

'Couldn't one wait?' I asked.

'Dear boy,' he said patiently. 'In this sort of practice no one waits.'

After some minutes he decided, 'I'll take the actress. The newspapers will be there by now. Yes, definitely the actress. I can bring the electrocardiograph, too-it's important to see that the heart will stand the strain in such a nervous creature. You do the Duke. And pray, dear boy'-he laid a hand on my sleeve-'remember constantly that for all practical purposes, you and I, at any rate, are not living in an egalitarian society.'

'I shall not fail you, sir,' I said stoutly.

'Good fellow!' He made for the door.

'What's wrong with the Duke?' I called after him.

'Just give him his usual treatment,' he replied over his shoulder, and disappeared.

I drove to the Duke of Skye and Lewis in our number two Rolls, feeling as if I were again going to an examination. One outstanding problem worried me: what was the Duke's usual treatment? Apart from the electrocardiograph, our practice did not own much medical equipment, and I had with me only a stethoscope, a throat torch, a gadget for measuring the gap in sparking plugs, a short plastic ruler advertising a cough mixture, a silver-plated presentation bottle-opener, and a small brush for cleaning my lighter, with which to effect my ministrations.

The car stopped outside a door in Eaton Square. As I got out I said to the chauffeur, 'You must have taken Dr Potter-Phipps here a good few times. I don't suppose you know what the blue-blooded old boy's usual treatment is, do you?'

He shrugged his shoulders. 'Sorry, Doctor. There was a duke what lived round the corner, I remember, and he had varicose veins. There was another with prostate trouble up the road-but come to think of it, he was an earl.'

The door was opened by a young maid.

'The doctor,' I said, suddenly feeling that I was delivering the groceries.

'This way.' I followed her, tugging at the edge of my new jacket for support. Could I conceivably ask this girl what the usual treatment was? Then it struck me that I should have to start referring to my patient in a more regular manner. This was my second difficulty in the case. Although I had secretly bought the silver-covered book invaluable to young Englishmen wanting to get on-_Titles and Forms of Address: A Guide to Their Correct Use_-I had found the paragraphs more difficult to memorize than my anatomy and physiology. I summoned the pages urgently to mind, but in the perverted way that I could always remember in examinations the full structural formula of anhydrohydroxyprogesterone and forget all the signs of pneumonia, I now recalled only that the wives of the younger sons of earls share their husbands' titles and honorific initials never appear on visiting-cards.

'His Grace will see you in a minute,' said the maid.

His Grace! That was it. But did I call him 'Your Grace?' Or was that only for the Archbishop of Canterbury and York?

The Duke of Skye and Lewis was a fat red-faced man with a large moustache, lying on his bed in a yellow silk dressing-gown.

'Morning, Doctor,' he said amiably. 'I had a call to say Potter-Phipps couldn't come. Pity. Busy this time of the year, I shouldn't wonder?'

'Yes, er, your-your-sir.'

'Have a seat. You're not rushed for a minute, are you? Potter-Phipps said you knew everything about my case, but I like to have a chat with my doctor. I don't like being pulled about by someone I don't know. It's almost indecent. Doctoring's a man-to-man business, whatever you cook up these days in test-tubes. Do you play golf?'

We argued about mashie shots for ten minutes, then the Duke said with a sigh of resignation, 'Well, Doctor, I suppose it's time for you to give me the usual treatment?'

'Of course. The usual treatment.' I stood up and rubbed my hands slowly together. 'And how,' I asked craftily, 'is the usual complaint?'

'About the same.'

'I see.'

I nodded sagely. There was a pause.

'Let's get on with it, Doctor,' the Duke continued, settling himself on the bed, a brave man about to face an ordeal. 'The sooner it's started, the sooner it's finished.'

What the devil could it be? Manipulation of the vertebrae? Syphonage of the sinuses? Something internal with irrigation? Hypnosis?

'Come along, Doctor.' The Duke was becoming impatient. 'Potter-Phipps does it in a jiffy, with his bare hands.'

I blurted out, now desperate, 'Perhaps you will forgive me for asking, sir-'

'Oh, the new ones? They're in the box on the chimneypiece.'

I shot a glance hopefully towards the fireplace, but met only an unhelpful ormolu clock and some statuettes.

'Of course, sir, new ones-'

'They need new ones this time, and no mistake,' the Duke went on, waggling his feet. Suddenly I saw-I had been summoned to change his corn-plasters.

At the end of the operation the Duke said, 'I suppose you'll be expecting the same sort of outrageous fee as old Potter-Phipps?'

'I really couldn't say,' I told him, smiling with relief. 'I never discuss the money side of it.'

'Neither do I,' he agreed. 'In my family it's thought rather vulgar.'

10

Dr Potter-Phipps ran his practice as efficiently as a motor-car factory. Every morning at eight, three men in green overalls arrived with vacuum cleaners; at eight-fifteen a man dressed as a postilion called with the day's supply of clean towels; at eight-twenty a page-boy brought the waiting-room papers and magazines; at eight-thirty a girl looking like Lady Macbeth with pernicious anaemia came from a West End florist's to change the flowers; at eight-forty a fat man in a frockcoat and bowler entered with Dr Potter-Phipps' freshly-pressed suits; at eight-fifty the chauffeurs, the butler, the secretary, and the nurse appeared, and at nine sharp we were open for business.