Doctor On The Job Read Free Page A

boot?’
    ‘Most definitely. Can’t encourage idleness in the medical school. It doesn’t matter whose nephews they are, even the Minister of Social Services.’
    Sir Lionel Lychfield was one of St Swithin’s dozen or so consultant general physicians. But as dean of the medical school, he exercised the power and high-minded severity over its students of Dr Arnold at Rugby. ‘That’s the trouble with the younger generation,’ he went on. ‘Laziness, lack of application, no sense of purpose, complete indifference to their elders, and in fact to all authority whatever. Not all of them, naturally,’ he corrected himself briskly. ‘Some of our young are absolutely first-class. They restore your faith in the coming generation and humanity in general. My youngest daughter Faith, for example –’
    ‘You told me about your youngest daughter Faith at lunch last week,’ Sir Lancelot interrupted.
    ‘Young Faith! Barely eighteen years old. Already with the serious intent and the sense of vocation of a budding Florence Nightingale.’ The dean nodded proudly towards the mural. ‘Faith neither smokes nor drinks nor wears jeans, and devotes her life to helping the underprivileged –’
    ‘So you were saying last week –’
    ‘Do you know what she’s been doing all this month? Living in this austere hostel under barracklike discipline down in Fulham. On a pittance – I must say, these voluntary service organizations do quite blatantly exploit the good nature of girls like Faith. She gives the full benefit of her sweet and altruistic character to the down-and-outs they collect off the Embankment and similar places. Though I suspect most of them are simply too lazy to do a decent day’s work, and if I had my way would be given a pick and sent down the coalmines.’
    Noticing that Sir Lancelot was staring dreamily out of the window, the dean turned back to his newspaper, giving it an irritated shake. ‘God knows what the country’s coming to,’ he muttered. ‘Everyone today seems to think he’s entitled to a job for life, doing exactly the same work for steadily rising pay, even if nobody wants in the slightest what he happens to be making. Otherwise, everyone simply comes out on strike, and lives on the benefits the rest of us have to provide under this ghastly “pipsqueak” taxation. It’s a wonder there aren’t still factories making horseshoes and carriage-springs –’
    He broke off with a noise like a rusty gate in a gale.
    ‘What’s the matter?’ asked Sir Lancelot, looking alarmed.
    ‘They’ve caged our fox.’ Sir Lancelot seemed puzzled. ‘The St Swithin’s shop steward. Or our “SS man”, as I preferred to describe him,’ the dean added grimly. ‘That little twit who represented all the trade unionists at St Swithin’s, ever since they merged into the Amalgamated Confederation of Hospital Employees, ACHE. Read that.’
    He indicated the In brief column.
     
    MALE NURSE JAILED
    Arthur Pince (22), male nurse, was imprisoned for three years at the Old Bailey for indecent exposure and shoplifting. Mr Pince asked for a record number of 82 other charges to be taken into consideration.
     
    ‘They said he was the most bent shop steward in Britain,’ exclaimed the dean in anguish. ‘You could have used his vertebral column for a corkscrew.’
    ‘I know nothing about this man’s activities. All politics bore me, and hospital ones to distraction. From his utterances, I always thought him a seagreen incorruptible Robespierre.’
    ‘Muddy and loaded with valuable flotsam and jetsam, more likely,’ said the dean with a bitter laugh. ‘These revolutionaries are all the same. Morality and misery for the masses, sybaritism for themselves. Pince was as susceptible to flattery as an infant to chicken-pox. He took bribes – or rather presents in the interests of good employer-staff relationships – with the ease and frequency of bookmakers taking bets on Derby Day. I believe he was also susceptible