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”)
 |
| Dr Samuel Johnson |
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 plummy bass tones used to warn of constipation or offer remedies
for lumbago, who became a Tory minister, while Cameron favoured convivial Dr Liam Fox, charged with running Defence on a shoestring. Ulster provided
a platform for Dr Ian Paisley. I
always had a soft spot for the late Big Ian, despite his 17th
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 scientific 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.
 |
| Dr Henry Kissinger |
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 already 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 their 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 the detective 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 suspicious deaths in Eastbourne
between 1946 and 1956. The 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.
 |
| Omar Sharif as lovelorn Dr Zhivago |
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-life 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 brave efforts to preach brotherhood and peace.
 |
| Dr Cameron, Janet and Dr Finlay |
My final glimpse of doctors is from the world of fiction. Dr Finlay’s Casebook entranced 1960s
Sunday BBC TV audiences. Straight talking and idealistic Dr Finlay (Bill Simpson) practised 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
8.11.11 and 3.08.2015
Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2011 and 2015
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