The GOOD DOCTOR

The term “The Good Doctor” seems to be applied widely to anyone who can claim the title of doctor and does not belong to any doctor in particular. St Thomas Aquinas is sometimes thus named, in honour of his saintly life and profound theological writings, so influential in the medieval Catholic Church though much disputed elsewhere. My preferred Good Doctor is Dr Samuel Johnson, whose trenchant opinions (“Sir, I tell you the first Whig was the Devil”) and highly competitive conversation (“No man but a blockhead ever wrote, but to make money”) enliven Boswell’s pages, even though initially he had a curiously dim view of Scotsmen! (“Oats: A grain used in England to feed horses: in Scotland it supports the people”)

Doctors come in all shapes and sizes, fact and fiction, good and bad. Dr Faustus, burnished by Marlowe’s memorable poetry, made his fatal bargain with the Devil, just as in real life Dr Josef Goebbels made his Faustian pact with Hitler, living and dying with his hero. In Germany anyone with a post-grad degree can call himself doctor and thus we have a procession of Chancellors, Dr Adenauer, Dr Erhard, Dr Kiesinger, Dr Schmidt etc, although Angela Merkel, also a doctor, does not normally use the title

Doctors in British politics are rarer, but I recall Dr Charles Hill, the one time Radio Doctor, whose plumy bass tones used to warn of constipation or offer remedies for lumbago, who became a Tory minister and Cameron now favours Dr Liam Fox, currently trying to run Defence on a shoestring. Ulster provided a platform for Dr Ian Paisley. I have always had a soft spot for Big Ian, despite his 17^th century opinions, who, with his family once sat down beside me and mine at London Airport at the height of the Troubles in the 1970s, he genially drinking tea, while I glanced uneasily around for machine-gunners.

The United States is fond of doctors. Dr Strangelove, the chilling amalgam of several military advisers in the nuclear-obsessed 1960s, was portrayed brilliantly by Peter Sellers in Kubrick’s movie. Nixon’s eminence grise Dr Henry Kissinger pulled off diplomatic coups in Vietnam and China and I recall taking the Circle Line boat trip around Manhattan and the guide broadcasting a cheery “Hi, Hank!” as we passed the Kissinger apartment on the Upper East Side. Jimmy Carter used distinguished but unpronounceable Dr Zbigniew Brzezinsky as his geostrategist, to rather less positive effect.

Trouble often arises when doctors potter about in their laboratories, swallow some bubbling phial and upset the laws of Nature. A case in point is conventional Dr Jekyll, whose potion made his face age horribly, sprout hair, grow fangs and claws, making his alter ego Mr Hyde rather tiresomely homicidal. Dr Frankenstein was another meddler, creating a monster whose only merit was that he could not run fast, so you could evade his fearful clutches, if you were not rooted to the spot. Dr Who time-travels happily enough in his Tardis as long as those scary Daleks keep out of sight. Dr Dolittle needed no lab and merely had to master the language of animals and preferred the company of parrots, pigs and ducks, quite understandably.

The criminal world is replete with doctors. Dr Fu Manchu was the Yellow Peril incarnate, with his sinister drooping moustaches: during the war Hollywood was asked to drop its film series as the Chinese were important allies and must not be offended. Earlier The Cabinet of Dr Caligari was the first silent horror film; where the protagonist used his hypnotised sleepwalking slave as an assassin – the more far-fetched the story, the better. As for Professor Moriarty “The Napoleon of Crime” (he must have had a doctorate too!), it took a desperate struggle at the Reichenbach Falls to put paid to him and, as first thought, to Sherlock Holmes too, but he reappeared at those Baker Street lodgings to the great relief of his faithful friend Dr Watson and the entire British reading public.

Real life villainous medics are not unknown. Dr Crippen’s actual 1910 murder was not so remarkable, but his capture through use of the new-fangled Marconi wireless was. Dr John Bodkin Adams was never convicted of anything other than failure to keep a proper poisons’ register, although suspected of 160 unusual deaths in Eastbourne between 1946 and 1956. The recent 2000 horrifying case of cold-hearted Dr Harold Shipman – probably at least 215 victims – emphasises that bearded doctors in single practice are a danger to the community. His suicide in Wakefield jail was one of his few decent acts.

But surely there are doctor-heroes. Who can forget Omar Sharif as Dr Zhivago gazing raptly with those glistening dark eyes at lovely Julie Christie as Lara? Then there was the real commanding figure of Dr Albert Schweitzer, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, ministering selflessly (if paternalistically) to the African in his hospital in Lambarene, Gabon, wearing his distinctive solar topee. His penetrating theological work The Quest for the Historical Jesus and his organ building and playing of Bach and Widor would have singled him out as remarkable, let alone his attempts to preach brotherhood and peace.

My final glimpse of doctors is from the world of fiction. Dr Finlay’s Casebook entranced 1960s Sunday TV audiences. Straight talking and idealistic Dr Finlay (Bill Simpson) practiced in the Scottish country town of Tannochbrae in the late 1920s: his enthusiasms had sometimes to be restrained by his older partner, wheezing, avuncular and wise Dr Cameron (Andrew Cruickshank). They grappled together with the contemporary scourges of diphtheria, rickets, ignorance and poverty. They were fussed over by their receptionist-cum-housekeeper at Arden House, Janet (Barbara Mullen) - “Oh doctor, you’ve nae eaten up your porridge!” Each episode was well-scripted and literate, the period detail was faultless and the outcomes spoke well of the competence and humanity of doctors, which is what we always want to hear but do not always get.

SMD

12.8.11

Copyright Sidney Donald 2011