Doctors and the Hollow Men

On rare occasions even medical consultations can turn interesting. One such was when a senior banker who came to see me as a patient and crossed beyond symptoms, sighs and sorrow to literature. He had been a student of English literature himself before taking to banking, and what pulled the trigger was his expression of surprise at a medical specialist like me writing a weekly column for HT City.

His surprise rose to incredulous levels when I told him that five of the most celebrated writers had been medicos. My count began with Sir (Dr) Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes of “The Hounds of Baskerville” fame. What makes the detective stories so fascinating is Doyle’s deep knowledge and use of forensic medicine that both the offender uses to inflict harm and the detective, Sherlock Holmes, uses to crack the mystery with. Most agree that Doyle remains one of the favourite mystery writers of all times.

Another gifted writer was Dr W Somerset Maugham, my favourite for many years. His stories involved doctors, society and feelings. He was adept at describing tumultous human emotions and their conflicts. His book “The Painted Veil” describes the emotional travail of a young dedicated microbiologist whose trauma of discovering his wife’s unfaithfulness goads him to risk his life and explore a dangerous epidemic, to which he succumbs, blurring the lines between valour and suicide. His semi-autobiography, “Of Human Bondage", is the story of a young child handicapped with a club foot, who becomesa doctor, and the intricate interplay of his childhood frustrations, romantic obsessions and acquired professional pleasure, and remains a “must-read” for all literature lovers.

The story of how Dr AJ Cronin, a Scottish doctor, became a celebrated novesit is interesting. Soon after graduating from medical school and starting practice, he contracted tuberculosis, necessitating rest for 6 months. With not much else to do he started writing novels and soared as a writer with books such as “Hatter’s Castle” and “The Stars Look Down”. His writings deal with social themes often viewed through the eyes of a doctor.

Dr Richard Gordon, famous for his ’Doctor’series (such as “Doctor at Sea”), brings forth the humorous aspect of life as seen through the eyes of a doctor. The funny anecdotes in his books can make the most serious of readers laugh and giggle. Try not to read him in airports and trains, as fellow passengers may suspect you of insanity!

We Indians too have had our share; the literary giant Balai Chand Mukhopadhyay who wrote under the pen name “Bonophul” and produced immortal classics like “Bhuban Shom” (remember the movie that won the Berlin award!) was a medical practitioner who wrote novels and stories when the patients were in low ebb.

Proudly having said all that, I finally turned to my banker patient and asked him if any of his profession could match us doctors. He quietened me with just a single name “TS Elliot”, the despondent sardonic American poet and my most favourite!

‘That is the way the world ends, Not with a bang, but with a whimper’. He must have incurred heavy losses, I thought.