This was understandable. Dr Whitehouse worked from the huge tome called Sisson’s Anatomy, the forbidding contents of which every student was expected to assimilate. The following extract is typicaclass="underline" ‘The great sciatic nerve ( N. ischiadicus) … is derived chiefly from the sixth lumbar and the first sacral roots of the lumbo-sacral plexus, but usually has a fifth lumbar root and may receive a fasciculus from the second sacral nerve. It turns downward in the hollow between the trochanter major and the tuber ischii over the gemellus, the tendon of the obturator internus, and the quadratus femoris. In its descent in the thigh it lies between the biceps femoris laterally and the adductor, semimembranosus, and semitendinosus medially, and is continued between the two heads of the gastrocnemius as the tibial nerve. Its chief branches are as follows …’ There is little wonder that in the face of such a bombardment, the students’ minds either wandered on to subjects of greater interest or, more commonly, just descended into insensibility.
In the Autumn term of 1937, at the beginning of his fifth year, Alf progressed to Pathology, Medicine and Surgery. With his failures in several subjects necessitating re-sits, he had fallen behind and was resigned to the prospect of taking more than the statutory five years to complete the course. He was not too downhearted. Not only were many of his friends in a similar position but, having reached a stage of his education where he felt that he was entering the nuts and bolts of his future career, he was more determined than ever to do well. Pathology, the study of disease: this was what it was all about. Pathology was a subject that both fascinated and frightened him, and at this stage of his education, a man entered his life who would remain vividly in his memory until the day he died. A man who would figure in his dreams for years to come – someone he told us about so many times that I almost felt I, too, had sat next to my father, quivering in the supercharged atmosphere of his Pathology lectures. A man by the name of Professor J. W. Emslie.
I am not one who is prone to nightmares. Once settled beneath the sheets, I spend, in general, a pleasant several hours in another world. I dream vividly and my dreams are usually a pleasant variation on my life’s activities. I do, however, suffer a recurring and disturbing dream. The orchestrator of these unnerving experiences is a nameless and shapeless individual who persistently informs me that I am not a qualified veterinary surgeon at all. I do not know this person but I have grown to dislike him intensely over the years. ‘You haven’t passed your Physics and Chemistry and you’ll have to take them again!’ he repeatedly tells me. I shrug this off, asserting that I shall re-take the exams and pass them without any problem, but he has his doubts – and so do I. As the dream progresses, I do nothing about swotting for the exams until finally I face the prospect of cramming the whole of the Chemistry and Physics syllabus into one day. At this point, to my intense relief, I wake up.
My father, too, suffered a similar dream throughout his life but it was not Chemistry and Physics that were to frighten him in his nocturnal wanderings. It was a subject that he loved but found difficult to grasp, and one whose exam he failed at veterinary college. That subject was Pathology and, as with me, an alarming individual presided over his dream, bombarding him with bad news. There was one big difference: Alf Wight knew his tormentor well. He was none other than his old professor of Pathology, the menacing and unforgettable John W. Emslie.
My father spoke to us at great length about his college days, and we heard much about the many friends he made there but, without any doubt, the number one character we remembered best was Professor Emslie. Quite simply, he frightened my father out of his wits.
A rude shock was in store for the students when they began Pathology. The days of noise and laughter in the lecture theatres became a thing of the past as Professor Emslie burst into their lives and presided over the trembling students like the Demon King. He left such a deep impression on Alf that he was later to appear in Alf’s early attempt at a novel in the guise of a formidable professor by the name of ‘Quentin Muldoon’.
Muldoon. The name was like a knell, like the tolling of a great bell in an empty tower and the students heard its warning echoes from their first days.… Quentin Muldoon, professor of Pathology, was a dedicated and, in many ways, brilliant scientist in the prime of life and though he may have questioned the justice of divine providence in selecting him to disclose the breathless secrets and supreme wonders of his subject to the shaggy creatures who shambled before him through the years, he did his duty as he saw it. That duty was to teach Pathology and anything or anybody getting in the way of his teaching was mercilessly crushed. Pathos Logos, the science of disease, the answer to all the questions, the brilliant light bursting suddenly on total darkness, the steady pointing finger of truth and hope. That was how Muldoon saw Pathology and he made some of his students see it too. The others just learned the facts of it or he crucified them.
Walsh learned about Muldoon in whispers from the older students. He hadn’t been at the college for a week before the mutterings started. ‘Aye, it’s all very well just now but wait till your fourth year, wait till you get Muldoon. Don’t worry, he’ll know all about you before you get into his class. Mark my words, every single thing you do, good or bad, from the day you enter this college, Muldoon knows. He’s got you taped, laddie, right from the word go. Every mark in every exam in every subject. Every time you skipped out of the anatomy lab to go to the pictures, every time you got drunk at the dances, it’s all there in that big black head!’
When the first three years went by and Walsh’s class finally filed into the Pathology classroom, the tension was almost unbearable. Muldoon was late and the minutes ticked by as the class sat looking up at the empty platform, the desk and blackboard, the rows of specimens in glass jars. Then the door at the back clicked. Nobody looked round but a slow, heavy tread was coming down the central aisle. Walsh was half way down the class at the end of the row and a dark presence almost brushed him as it passed. He had a back view of a bulky figure in a creased, tight fitting, slightly shiny navy blue suit. The head, massive and crowned with abundant black hair, was sunk broodingly between the shoulders. The feet, splayed and flat, were put down unhurriedly at each step and under one arm was a thick wad of notes. Muldoon mounted the platform and moved without haste to his desk where he began to lay out his notes methodically. He took a long time over this and still he hadn’t even glanced up. Still looking down at the desk he straightened his tie, adjusted the handkerchief in his breast pocket then he raised his head slowly and gazed at the class.
It was a broad, fleshy, pale-jowled face and the eyes, black and brilliant, swept the students with a mixture of hatred and disbelief. After a trial run, the eyes started at the beginning and began to work their way slowly along the packed rows in an agonising silence. Muldoon, having finally finished his scrutiny, thrust his tongue into his cheek – a characteristic gesture with a ‘God help us, this is the end’ touch about it – sighed deeply and began to address the class.
He began suddenly, with an abruptness which made some of his charges jump nervously, by throwing out one arm and shouting, ‘You can put those away for a start!’ The students who had been fumbling with notebooks and pens dropped them hurriedly and Muldoon spoke again. ‘I’m not going to lecture to you today, I’m just going to talk to you.’ And he did talk for over an hour in a menacing, husky monotone. He told them what he expected them to do during the coming year and what would happen to them if they didn’t do it. The end of the lecture came and went but nobody moved a muscle.