DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE

caused that hollow?' All he wanted for a reply was the single word 'Pressure,' but Harris looked at the specimen in blank silence. With a sigh, the kindly examiner removed his pince-nez and indicated the two indentations they left on each side of his nose. 'Well,' he continued helpfully, 'what do you think caused that?' Something clicked in Harris's panicky brain. The depressed nasal bridge…a picture flashed up that he had seen so often in the opening pages of his surgery book. 'Congenital syphilis, sir,' he replied without hesitation.

I was shown to a tiny waiting-room furnished with hard chairs, a wooden table, and windows that wouldn't open, like the condemned cell. There were six candidates from other hospitals waiting to go in with me, all of them in their best clothes. They illustrated the types fairly commonly seen in viva waiting-rooms. There was the Nonchalant, lolling back on the rear legs of his chair with his feet on the table, showing the bright yellow socks under his blue trouser-legs. He was reading the sporting page of the Express with undeceptive thoroughness. Next to him, a man of the Frankly Worried class sat on the edge of his chair tearing little bits off his invitation card and jumping irritatingly every time the door opened. There was the Crammer, fondling the pages of his battered text-book in a desperate farewell embrace, and his opposite, the Old Stager, who treated the whole thing with the familiarity of a photographer at a wedding. He had obviously failed the examination so often he looked upon the viva simply as another engagement to be fitted into his day. He stood looking out of the window and yawning, only cheering up when he saw the porter, with whom he was now on the same warm terms as an undergraduate and his college servant.

'How are you getting on this time, sir?' the porter asked him cheerily.

'Not so dusty, William, not so dusty at all. The second question in the paper was the same one they asked four years ago. What are they like in there?'

'Pretty mild, this morning, sir. I'm just taking them their coffee.'

'Excellent! Put plenty of sugar in it. A low bloodsugar is conducive to bad temper.'

'I will, sir. Best of luck.'

'Thank you, William.'

The other occupant of the room was a woman. A trim little piece, I noticed, probably from the Royal Free. She sat pertly on her chair with her hands folded on her lap. Women students-the attractive ones, not those who are feminine only through inescapable anatomical arrangements-are under a disadvantage in oral examinations. The male examiners are so afraid of being prejudiced favourably by their sex they usually adopt towards them an undeserved sternness. But this girl had given care to her preparations for the examination. Her suit was neat but not smart; her hair tidy but not striking; she wore enough make-up to look attractive, and she was obviously practising, with some effort, a look of admiring submission to the male sex. I felt sure she would get through.

I sat alone in the corner and fingered my tie. They always made the candidates arrive too early, and the coffee would delay them further. There was nothing to do except wait patiently and think about something well removed from the unpleasant quarter of an hour ahead, such as rugby or the lady student's legs. Suddenly the door was flung open and a wild-eyed youth strode in.

'It's not too bad!' he exclaimed breathlessly to the nonchalant fellow. The two apparently came from the same hospital.

'I had Sir Rollo Doggert and Stanley Smith,' he said with a touch of pride. This brought a nod of appreciation from all of us, as they were known as two of the toughest examiners in London.

'Doggert started off by asking me the signs and symptoms of pink disease,' he continued. 'Luckily I knew that as I had happened to look it up last night…'

'Pink disease!' cried the worried man. 'My God, I forgot about that!'

'So I saw at once the way to handle him was to talk man-to-man, you know-none of this servile business, he much prefers to be stood up to. I reeled off pink disease and he said very good, my lad, very good.'

'Did he ask you anything else?' his friend said anxiously.

'Oh yes. He said, supposing I was out golfing with a diabetic who collapsed at the third tee, what would I do? Well, I said…'

The visitor gave a description of this examination in detail, like the man who comes out of the dentist's surgery and insists on telling the occupants of the waiting-room his experiences on the excuse that none of the frightful things that can happen really hurt.

The raconteur was stopped short by the porter. He marshalled us into line outside the heavy door of the examination room. There was a faint ting of a bell inside. The door opened and he admitted us one at a time, directing each to a different table.

16

You go to table four,' the porter told me.

The room was the one we had written the papers in, but it was now empty except for a double row of baize- covered tables separated by screens. At each of these sat two examiners and a student who carried on a low earnest conversation with them, like a confessional.

I stood before table four. I didn't recognize the examiners. One was a burly, elderly man like a retired prize- fighter who smoked a pipe and was writing busily with a pencil in a notebook; the other was invisible, as he was occupied in reading the morning's Times._

'Good morning, sir,' I said.

Neither of them took any notice. After a minute the burly fellow looked up from his writing and silently indicated the chair in front of him. I sat down. He growled.

'I beg your pardon, sir?' I said politely.

'I said you're number 306?' he said testily. 'That's correct, I suppose?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Well, why didn't you say so? How would you treat a case of tetanus?'

My heart leapt hopefully. This was something I knew, as there had recently been a case in St. Swithin's.

I started off confidently, reeling out the lines of treatment and feeling much better.

The examiner suddenly cut me short.

'All right, all right,' he said impatiently, 'you seem to know that. A girl of twenty comes to you complaining of gaining weight. What do you do?'

This was the sort of question I disliked. There were so many things one could do my thoughts jostled into each other like a rugger scrum and became confused and unidentifiable.

I-I would ask if she was pregnant,' I said.

'Good God, man! Do you go about asking all the girls you know if they're pregnant? What hospital d'you come from?'

'St. Swithin's, sir,' I said, as though admitting an illegitimate parentage.

'I should have thought so! Now try again.'

I rallied my thoughts and stumbled through the answer. The examiner sat looking past me at the opposite wall, acknowledging my presence only by grunting at intervals.

The bell rang and I moved into the adjoining chair, facing _The Times._ The newspaper rustled and was set down, revealing a mild, youngish-looking man in large spectacles with a perpetual look of faint surprise on his face. He looked at me as if he was surprised to see me there, and every answer I made was received with the same expression. I found this most disheartening.

The examiner pushed across the green baize a small sealed glass pot from a pathology museum, in which a piece of meat like the remains of a Sunday joint floated in spirit.

'What's that?' he asked.

I picked up the bottle and examined it carefully. By now I knew the technique for pathological specimens of this kind. The first thing to do was turn them upside down, as their identity was often to be found on a label on the bottom. If one was still flummoxed one might sneeze or let it drop from nervous fingers to smash on the floor.

I upturned it and was disappointed to find the label had prudently been removed. Unfortunately there was so much sediment in the jar that it behaved like one of those little globes containing an Eiffel Tower that on reversal cover the model with a thick snowstorm. I could therefore not even see the specimen when I turned it back