From "A Strong Dose of Myself"

Abstract

Dannie Abse. Photograph by Joe Low. From "A Strong Dose of Myself" Dannie Abse Half the family are doctors. There is my eldest brother Wilfred, my father's brother Max, my mother's brother Joe. There are my two Ammanford cousins and also two other cousins from Cardiff, Michael and Jack. So when the family meets on those rare ceremonial occasions of celebration or lament, it is less a family gathering than a medical conference. In 1937, when I, a small boy, said, Ί wouldn't mind being a vet'—the cat lay motionless on its cushion on the carpet, its electric eyes staring at nothing and would not sip even a little of the warm milk I was offering it—my brother Wilfred said masterfully that I might as well become, like so many others in the family, a doctor. 'Sick people,' he maintained with the authority of one who had read Twelve Great Philosophers , 'are more important than sick animals.' I stared unhappily at the cat while my father overhearing our conversation, teased, 'You think this duffer has enough intelligence to become a doctor? ' My eldest brother replied without irony, 'All you need is average intelligence to become a doctor. He'll manage it. We ought to think seriously about putting his name down for the new Westminster Hospital Medical School that they are planning.' My mother used to say, 'Dannie never thinks of tomorrow.' She was wrong. I did and I do. But I rarely think of the day after tomorrow. That is why, perhaps, I have always resisted the idea of buying Life Insurance and that is certainly why, also, that since the question of whatare -you-going-to-be-when-you-grow-up had been solved, I thought more of being a medical student than a doctor. Wilfred had only just qualified. For years I had heard about medical student experiences and pranks. Had not Wilfred cured a baffling case of 36 A STRONG DOSE OF MYSELF hysterical blindness through hypnosis? (Wilfred was going to be a psychiatrist .) And only eighteen months earlier Wilfred had been doing his midwifery and the telephone had sounded after midnight. That's how important it was to be a medical student. True, on that occasion, Wilfred had to go to a house in Zinc Street to deliver a baby. The voice commanding him to do so had, apparently, been Welsh and urgent and hoarse. So my big brother, hero Wilfred, with his little black bag, climbed on to his bicycle and made for Splott. He did not know that Mr. and Mrs. Jones of Zinc Street had only just married, were still on their blissful honeymoon, and had no immediate plans to have a baby. He did not know that the hoarse, urgent, Welsh voice was that of another medical student conning him. It was raining in the district of Roath, Cardiff, where we lived then and from where Wilfred set out, and it was raining in the district of Splott, Cardiff, when he arrived on his bicycle, flustered and damp, at a dark door in Zinc Street. Clutching his little black bag he banged at the front door till a light went on upstairs, then a light in the hall, and finally the door opened to a sleepy, burly, tall lock-forward in pyjamas asking, 'Mmm? ' 'Where's your wife, Mr. Jones? ' asked Wilfred. 'Upstairs in bed,' replied the burly man, surprised. And he was even more surprised when Wilfred said, 'Good,' as he pushed past him and ran up the stairs enthusiastically. Yes, I thought, it may be fun to become a medical student, to mess around like that, and save every now and then one or two lives! I fancied myself walking down Queen Street with a stethoscope sticking, like a credential, out of my pocket. Some years later, in 1941, during my last year in school when I was studying those pre-medical subjects, biology, chemistry and physics, I was to hear much more about the crises and practical jokes of 'med' students. Three of my friends—a year older than I—were already at the Welsh National School of Medicine. When I joined them at...