Medical School Memories

MEDICAL SCHOOL MEMORIES

Kumar Gunawardane 

THE BEGINNING

The year was nineteen sixty-two. A watershed year of my life: the year I entered the Colombo Medical College, the second oldest in South Asia. I should have been proud and brimming over with joy, for the competition to enter was fierce. First, there was the written examination. Then the practicals followed by the viva voce. But it was angst that prevailed, unfounded, but nevertheless real. Pampered at home and school, the venerable St. Thomas’s, this was a plunge into uncharted territory. It was perhaps the ‘rag’ which worried me the most. 

The happiest in the family was Mother. She was ecstatic that one son at least would be following the family tradition, her father’s family being Hela physicians for generations. Father too was overjoyed, but his bearing was subdued. The thought may have flashed through his mind of the responsibility of putting two sons through university. If so he would have dismissed it instantly, as we never lacked anything; expensive textbooks and other chattels and comforts deemed essential for the urbane undergraduate. I even had a bleached and sanitised human skeleton at home for the study of Anatomy; mother may have had reservations about this as she believed in the occult, but they were never voiced. 

The first visit to the CMC was for registration and the medical examination. We walked on Kynsey road past the stately Koch memorial clock tower, debased by an adjoining cheap milk bar and onto the portals of a three storey neo-classical building. Its interior did not live up to the exterior. A swarthy man checked the squirming boys, quickly but thoroughly. I wondered silently whether he was washing his hands between cases. Whenever a doctor visited home we had a basin of warm water on a stand and a fresh towel. There may have been a washroom nearby or he may have worn gloves. I do not remember and did not have any qualms about the result, as I was healthy and robust. It was uneventful, except for one boy giggling uncontrollably when his nether parts were touched. He was brusquely reprimanded. 

THE “BLOCK YEARS”

The next visit was the real McCoy. The seniors had warned us to wear jackets back to front ,black ties, mismatched shoes and carry red hibiscuses to propose to the girls. We  were barred from the common room and the canteen, and bypassing these stepped gingerly onto the anatomy block to the accompaniment of jeers of some seniors. The gloomy dissection room, reeking of formalin ,with cadavers laid on marble slabs, lit by single naked bulbs, was not a pleasant introduction to Medicine. It was made worse by the macabre humour of some. Cigarettes were stuck into the mouths of some cadavers, and body parts sneaked into handbags. 

However this was where we had to spend our first two years. Each cadaver was assigned to ten students. As always it was the individuals who made the difference. I was partnered by a gauche but amiable boy to dissect a lower limb. At the top were two elegant girls, formal yet friendly, dissecting the head and neck. One was petite and demure and I wished fervently some senior would coerce me to offer my hibiscus to her. One of our ‘body partners’ Chira appeared to be a masterly dissector, presaging the skilled eye surgeon she was to become. The undisputed leader of our group was Elmo S. Though small in stature, his personality was titanic. He didn’t allow any outsiders to rag us and neither did he. A renowned sportsman, he had the easy charm acquired in the playing fields of his school, St Benedict’s. There were also amongst the seniors, my school mates who called on me, during these early days ,affording more protection. All in all I escaped lightly, a far cry from what I had imagined. 

The most inconvenience was caused by having to go outside for lunch. For a few days ,I went to my father’s plush office ,a five cent trolley bus ride away .Our  lunches were sent  to him by the railway restaurant caterers and was mouth-watering. Still it was a relief to line single file for the plain fare in the noisy congested canteen, sharing a table with my old Thomian mates; Bora was the cheekiest and kept us in stitches. Sydney more mature was staid. CD was well up with all the exploits of the day and B justly dubbed him “News of the World”. Bora had an amusing tale most days. One day it was him thumbing a lift from the feared Professor of medicine, another day how a mate fleeced him for a cigarette and a cup of tea after offering him a lift on the pillion of his scooter. Again, how he and Sydney were chided by an annoyed fellow student for arriving unannounced at his home. All related with a half-smile on his lips and a twinkle in his eyes. There was never any malice. At the end of the fortnight, some juniors had to ‘perform’ in the common room the grand finale of the ‘rag’; somehow I escaped. 

The daily routine appeared to have been set in stone. Every day lectures began at eight am in the physiology theatre. I had to leave early to catch two buses, the second a London Transport double decker from Dehiwala to the Lipton circus junction. The bus journey was leisurely as it stopped at every halt. The same crowd would board the bus on-the-way, usually onto the upper deck and with passage of time we developed friendships with most boys. The girls would smile but fuse with their own group. The landmark at our destination was the red and yellow Victoria Eye hospital. Its Indo-Saracenic architecture did not appeal to me but was acclaimed by many. Another landmark less prominent, but more popular was Bake House an eatery, more upmarket than a ‘Buth Kade- the poor man’s restaurant’. 

The first lecture was physiology and delivered by the avuncular professor A.C.E.Koch. He was a pleasure to listen to, the accent was  polished and the words carefully chosen. Clearly he loved his role ,for in his first lecture as professor ,he had quoted Rabbi Akiba from the Talmud “ my son ,-more than the calf wishes to suck, does the cow yearn to suckle”. The talks had been prepared in advance and ,even the jokes were said to be integrated into them. The uninhibited laughter of the students and the loud stamping of their feet on the wooden floor was music to his ears. He had studied physiology at Oxford and had been a contemporary of Roger Bannister, the first athlete to run the mile under four minutes. RB was then twenty five years old. Prof had a faded slide of RB which he would project year after year. He was witty and had a good sense of humour, gentle and inoffensive and also an eye for beauty. Manil H, who was two seats away, tells of the time she arrived late for his lecture; as she was about to take her seat, Prof K, remarked “it is the privilege of a Bella Donna to come late”. It was appropriate in another sense too as he was talking of atropine. 

 We were to encounter another distinguished teacher ‘‘Bull’ Seneviratne only at the end of the second year. The duo was affectionately called ‘‘Cock and Bull’. However we did have early, another outstanding teacher, Carlo Fonseka. He made neuro-physiology, that most complex of subjects comprehensible even to dullards. I followed some of his techniques when I started teaching medical students myself. He would state the principle first and then adduce the evidence.I preserved these notes and used them for my postgraduate studies. 

Stamping of feet at lectures was likely a European tradition and signified applause, while shuffling of feet conveyed displeasure. Reflecting our own culture, we never shuffled our feet even if we were bored to distraction. An hour long biochemistry lecture, which followed physiology may have justified some shuffling,; we then tramped to the canteen for a ‘tea-punt -a cup of insipid milk tea and a cigarette’’. I was following the herd as I really didn’t enjoy smoking. Luckily, I had to stop owing to a bad cough ,not caused by smoking but by tropical pulmonary eosinophilia; this is an allergic response to filariasis prevalent in the Dehiwala-Mount Lavinia region. It was easily treated with a freely available drug. ‘Diethylcarbamazine’. I never smoked cigarettes again. 

The rest of the day was in the dissection room, interrupted by an occasional anatomy lecture or the dreaded ‘signature’ the fortnightly oral test. Some examiners, we had “cold feet” with, were the junior lecturers. Others we looked forward to, like Professor Chanmugam. He addressed the questions to the whole group and anybody could answer. At the end he signed all our books. Prof C was eccentric and some boys parodied his pronunciation of ‘tissue and issue” The girls were more refined and did not resort to crudities. Another favourite was a pretty young woman teacher. Boys named her “Sweetie” ;the name fitted her to a T. 

The Anatomy Block was the oldest building in the campus. The lecture room was a steep amphitheatre with creaky wooden floors, uncomfortable wooden benches and a musty smell, befitting its age as the oldest building in the campus. The Professor stood at the podium; the only thing I remember now is, him using an aerosol for his wheeze; he was a kindly examiner and helped many to get over the line. The retired professor’s talks evinced mirth on account of bizarre pronunciation of certain words. 

The physiology lecture theatre was modern, spacious and cozy. The seats were numbered to facilitate roll call and assigned in alphabetical order. The tiered floor was wooden ,and stamping produced a deafening din. The stamping was sometimes, in genuine appreciation of a good joke, but sometimes a good ploy to let off steam even if the joke was tepid. Girls who arrived late also got the ‘treatment’; we got the impression, perhaps unkindly, that some of the latecomers were using it as a catwalk. Bora reminds me of our friend Tilak D arriving for a lecture five minutes before the end. His thinking had been that he was five minutes early. The uproarious laughter and the wave of stamping was endless.

The library, spacious, cool and peaceful was a haven in times of stress .The comfortable individual chairs and polished timber tables, shielding one from users across, induced slumber which was difficult at times  to resist. It was used more often in subsequent years. 

CALAMITY

The nadir or more precisely, the calamity of our block years was the behaviour of some of our colleagues during the “Law-Medical” cricket encounter. In a frenzy, fueled by alcohol and perhaps testosterone, they invaded a girl’s school and to put it mildly, behaved inappropriately. They were duly reported to the authorities and faced expulsion if identified. The inquiry was conducted by the Dean, himself; a Pickwickian figure he could strike an imperious posture when the occasion demanded. In actual fact he was kindly and fatherly. His daughter was in our year but in that era, conflict of interests may not have mattered.

There were moments of inadvertent humour too. The Dean warned that he had photographs of the culprits and would scrutinise them under an electron microscope. The guilty parties who knew next to nothing of this weird and wonderful contraption, were cowed into submission. Another boy when questioned claimed that the truck he was gallivanting in was only halfway in the school compound and he was in the half that was outside. But to the everlasting glory of our colleagues, the boys decided to accept culpability as a group. This was a collective and unanimous decision. We were fined ten rupees each and suspended from lectures for two weeks. he silver lining of this black cloud was the bonding of the boys and the loyalty of the girls. They volunteered to transcribe the lectures meticulously, and loan the notes to us. 

My abiding memory of this disastrous day is being sloshed to the brim on toddy straight out of a barrel and cheap arrack. My faithful friend Bora somehow shepherded me from the wilds of Wanathamulla to his apartment in Bambalapitiya. He put me on his bed; I’m not sure where he slept. I was too inebriated to call my parents. The next day, sober, spruced up and repentant I gingerly made my way home, prepared for the dressing down that I richly deserved. Mother quietly whispered in my ear “puthe (son) your father hasn’t slept a wink. He paced up and down the verandah all night”. Father discreetly kept out of my way. It was an enduring and salutary lesson to me of their love, concern and anguish for my safety. There was never a repetition. 

We were punished by some of our immediate seniors with a second rag, more vicious than the first.It was an expression  more of sadism than righteousness.

The glory of youth is its beauty and vitality; but its resilience and tenacity are equally or more important. Soon we rolled back nonchalantly into our dull routine of lectures and dissections with interludes in the canteen and the common room. The Law-Medical match was a bad dream, a nightmare. 

ROMANCE

I was quiet and diffident by nature then, as always, but unlike at school, I found it difficult to make new friends amongst either boys or girls. My interests in the opposite sex, few and far between were known only to me and a couple of close friends. They were only platonic friendships at the most, and that too ,if the girl was aware of my existence. Our inhibitions and morals were Victorian and we were aeons away from the permissive society. 

There were exceptions of audacity, though .A good friend was enamoured of a girl, an Audrey Hepburn lookalike. As I was a relative he twisted my arm to accompany him to her home. We arrived ,on a weekend ,uninvited ,but heralded by the rumbling of his large motorcycle. She and her mother were unfazed and charmed us with their hospitality. The romance was probably short lived as there were no more visits. 

Our introduction to clinical work was in the final term of the second year. For the first time we could sport that age old insignia of the physicians, the stethoscope. Some dangled it on their necks, others including me, concealed it bashfully, amid our books. However, on the way back home that day, it was deflating that an ill-mannered youth blared to all and sundry “Oi ,there’s a doctor in the bus”. 

There were compensations too. I made the acquaintance of a pretty Burgher girl, on account of the peeping stethoscope. She, a fellow bus traveler, an office worker was as tall as me ,slim ,with the complexion of her Eurasian forbears and an engaging smile. The next day I accompanied her to the railway station to catch a train instead of my usual, the red double decker. The trysts had to end soon, however as there were hostile glances from many, who I surely knew would report this to my mother. 

On the inaugural day we walked briskly, along the lengthy corridors of the Colombo General Hospital to the holy of holies the main surgical ward and waited with trepidation for the arrival of Dr Noel Bartholomeuz, the senior surgeon. He arrived in a style worthy of medical royalty, followed by his chief nurse and house officers. They welcomed him in the carpark and accompanied him to the ward. Immaculately clad in a white suit with an orchid in his buttonhole, this Burgher patrician had a commanding personality. A nurse gently removed his jacket and robed him in a long white coat. And then began the process of the bedside walk from patient to patient with us respectfully bringing up the rear. It was perhaps, at this moment, that the idea of becoming a hospital consultant took root. 

FINALE

In the penultimate month of our Block years John F Kennedy the 35th President of USA was assassinated by a sniper. The date was November 22 1963, the day Friday. Like the rest of the world ,I remember what I was doing at the exact moment the sepulchral tones of the announcer came through our ageing HMV radio. I was “cramming” for the 2nd MBBS examination which was just a few weeks ahead and pacing the long corridor of our house, lecture notes in hand. Overcome by anguish I couldn’t study the rest of the day. 

He was a celestial figure to all of us in our formative years. For this young man, so handsome, brave, inspiring and eloquent, and the husband of a beautiful wife and father of two adorable children to be snatched at his peak was more than we could bear. Woefully, we had to get back to books soon, however, as the terror of  the examination outweighed the grief. 

The exam itself was a maze of written papers, interviews and laboratory practicals. Not only did I survive, but triumphed, much to my relief. 

Examinations produced their own brand of humour. A repeat student in Anatomy did unexpectedly well with the left femur. The indulgent professor said “you can now choose any other bone and you will pass if you do well”. He picked the right femur! Fortunately, the examiner had a sense of humour. 

The celebrations were low key, one bottle of gin shared with three other friends in salubrious surroundings.