Case History Of A “Lady Doctor”

Those who prefer fact to flamboyant fiction would prob ably do well to take as their medical treat this month Memories of a Doctor in War and Peace, rather than The Interns (which is also reviewed, below).

Isabel Hutton, Cbe, Md, A

pioneer woman doctor, wrote the Memories shortly before she died last year. Although she was probably a better doctor than she is a writer— a professional would undoubtedly have made something more of her colourful life than she has herself— nonetheless, the calmness of under statement also has its place in this over-written world.

After the First World War she married Major Thomas Hutton who later was Knighted, but in 1905, as 16-years-old Isabel Emslie, daughter of the deputy Keeper of the Privy Seal of Scotland, she began her medical career at Edinburgh Uni versity.

It was a period when aspiring “lady doctors” were regarded as un

femininine freaks, carefully segregat from the rest of the medical studei and allowed within the sacred pi cincts of New University buildir only for the professional examit tions.

The fact that women were ps mitted to train as doctors at all w regarded as a giant step forwai although when she started her stud: in 1905 there were few avenues op after graduation.

The description of life—and p; ticularly the life of these advanc young women—at Edinburgh U: versity in the early years of tl century is perhaps the most intere ing part of the bock.

This University, unlike its me famous sister institutions in Englar had a tradition of Scottish “Pride a Poverty”, and little else. Few of t students came from affluent horr and Meal Monday was still a holid given in the middle of each sessi so that students might walk to th< homes in the country over the lo week-end and “trudge back with thi poke of meal to make porridge a pease-brose on which they had large subsisted at a still earlier period.”

For the Scots of the time, educ tion was a religion only slightly, any, less important than their nati Presbyterianism. The University pi vided the means of acquiring kno ledge; it was unconcerned how where the students lived or what se of a social life they led.

As a result, most became self-i liant, responsible citizens when lit more than adolescents.

After graduation, young Dr. Ems was lured into psychiatry, a bran of medicine then only in infancy. Tl career was interrupted by the w< when she joined the Scottish Womei Hospitals in France and Salonika ai accompanied the Serbian Army on 1918 advance. After the war w officially over, she attached herself the White Army in the Crimea.

Following her marriage, she settl down as a psychiatrist in Lond( until 1938 when she accompanied h husband to India. During World W II he was Chief of the General St£ there and she became Director of tl Indian Red Cross Welfare Service.

Apart from her medical caree Lady Hutton took a keen interest

wide variety of unrelated subjects -travel, ballet, painting and music sing only a few of them.

The greatest merit of this book is obably not what it tells or how it told, but the fact that it is written r a so obviously well-adjusted id completely integrated person, ad, judging by some of the “books” at we are called on to read these tys, that is sufficiently unusual in it- If!

(Memories Of A Doctor In War

ID PEACE. Published by Heinemann 1. 31/-.)

)ne With An

ish Accent

IENDER and charming have been words used to describe Kathleen tyle’s novels, and the latest of them, •een Grow the Rushes, keeps up the idition. It is Georgette Heyer type, th an Irish brogue.

The time is that of George III; i place Ulster. The heroine has the usual name of Oenone, but from ;re on, the mixture is well tested d tried. Oenone has an impover icd Earl for a grandfather, a istrel Viscount for a father and is •n away from her first love, rence, owner of a stud farm, and r own exceptional interest in horses, make her debut in Dublin.

The objective of this manoeuvre is attract the attention of a choosey chelor Marquess. This she does but thoress Fovle’s fans will be pleased d not very surprised to know that ; story has a happy-ever-after end l, with the Marquess turning out be a real friend and Terence win ig the girl.

Green Grow The Rushes. Pub

led by Peter Davies. 18/9.)

For Railway

Reading !

PS specially written for reading on the British nationalised railway item —it says so on the cover. And slapstick seems to be called for in s connection, that’s what A Tidy [ of Brass turns out to be. It’s itten by P. M. Learoyd, who dedi es it to his wife, so it’s probably first book.

The English come in two moods: at of understatement and that of Hedy, and when it’s comedy, it’s : old-fashioned, slap-stick kind nplete with policemen, widows, ►thers-in-law. The works.

Mr. Learoyd’s epic concerns a imp, middle-aged widow who’d

made a bit of brass running a beauty salon, and her two suitors, the local police sergeant and the local grocer.

The plot is complicated by the facts that the sergeant has a daughter who was last year’s Miss Rockpool; the widow has a son who is a grown-up child delinquent; and the grocer has a daughter who is a man-eater.

Complicated, too, by the facts that the grocer has had “1,000 nicker” planted on him by a couple of small

time bank robbers, has had it lifted from him by the widow’s son who gives it to the sergeant’s daughter who uses it to buy the widow’s beauty salon.

For those who weren’t born in Yorkshire, the fact that the charac ters were is an additional complica tion. Real Peter Sellars stuff. Without Peter, ( A tidy bit of brass. Published by Peter Davies. 18/9.)