Life in the North East of England (63)
Rod Adams
We gave him a lift home and he collapsed onto the pavement as he was getting out of the car. Right outside his house. Jim you see suffered from Angina. We knew that and we searched his pockets for his medication but couldn’t find it so we rushed into his house where his wife, Joan, couldn’t find any either, so we called for an ambulance and accompanied it to the local hospital and it was there that I saw the man again. For the first time in many, many years. My heart sank. The drawback of working all your life in a Medical School is that students who you knew as being quite crazy people eventually become Doctors. Anyway, I remembered him from his days as a student. Who wouldn’t have?
He didn’t recognise me, unshaven and in my old clothes, but I recognised him of course as he emerged from behind some curtains with the E.C.G. tape in his hands, upside down of course, and looking very puzzled. “Your husband” he said confidently to Joan “has definitely had a heart attack.” As soon as I could I took Jim’s wife to one side, “get him out of there” I said “as quick as you can or he will have a proper heart attack.” Jimmy promptly discharged himself the next morning. In the event he did die of a coronary heart attack– ten years later! To this day I still harbour this tendency to confuse the relative roles of Doctors, Fortune Tellers, Prostitutes and Undertakers!
We had been talking in the cabin you see, about Doctors and Vets. How, as in any other walk of life, there are good ones and bad ones and how Vets, in a way, are like Paediatricians treating very young children. Their patients can’t tell them what their symptoms are so they have to rely upon their own skills to make a correct diagnosis. Some will be right and some wrong and this is where the “good Doctor/not so good Doctor” effect will have a bearing.
This man had never been an ordinary student. Much older than his classmates he already possessed a lot of money, a first degree, was married to a successful career woman, was a musician of sorts and drove a big, expensive, car. But he was remote, a little hard of hearing, and unworldly to an extent that was quite alarming. What other student would sit in a busy Pathology laboratory making up salad sandwiches behind the lid of his suitcase during a lecture?
Everyone, from the Head of Department downwards, was in agreement that he wouldn’t make a good Doctor. Some even going as far as to say he should never be allowed to practice medicine, but he kept on passing his examinations. All of them. Until he eventually qualified as a medic. And joined my mental list of those “Doctors who I would jump off a hospital trolley for and go home” if ever I was unfortunate enough to come in front them of as a patient!
It’s not a big list but that man is right at the top of it and Iain, a little Scottish Dancing friend of mine, at the bottom, with a dozen or so others in-between them. Not too bad for over forty years in the trade! Good Doctors however are a sight easier to find in the UK than Veterinarians who know much about pigeons, never mind good ones. Infallibility is the prerogative of the gods, not of Veterinarians nor Doctors (nor anyone else really) but you wouldn’t think so to listen to them!
Regarding the so-called Young Bird Sickness. I have this “theory” you see, that whilst you can get rid of the symptoms (vomiting, holding corn, bad droppings) quite easily, the birds are not fully recovered for some time afterwards (think flu, think how weak you are long after the symptoms have disappeared) which could perhaps explain some of the losses incurred on the road. It certainly leaves them very hungry at the end of whatever course of treatment is being used and fighting for their corn even though their crops are full. I don’t think this is a carry-over from the early withdrawal of food but an indication of how their metabolism has been affected by whatever has ailed them.
The causative organism is likely to be a mild form of Circo Virus. This virus affects the immune system and this would explain how such a wide variety of treatments appear to effect an improvement. This probably comes about as a result of the virus running its natural, perhaps self-limiting, course whilst the various treatments are clearing up or helping to clear up the background/secondary infections.
I never saw the film “The Mission” but I read about it and have visited the site of one of the best known and best preserved Jesuit missions in North Eastern Argentina whilst on a bird watching trip. The history of the Jesuits in Paraguay, Uruguay, Brazil and Argentina is a fascinating one. How you see their role, as a vanished Arcadia, a kind of primitive socialism or as one of enslavement, exploitation and enforced Christianity depends upon your outlook but they were certainly a force to be reckoned with. Between 1609 and 1767 when they were forcibly expelled from Spanish South America by Carlos the third of Spain they founded about 50 missions creating great wealth and economic power, controlled the native Guarini indians (thus controlling the available labour force,) trained their own militia, and rumour has it, also mined precious metals.
The story of their flight Southwards when attacked by the slave hunting Bandeirantes from San Paulo is remarkable. 10,000 converts on 700 rafts floated down river until halted by the Guaira Falls. They marched for 8 days, on both sides of the river, hacking their way through dense virgin forest and built new rafts below the falls ending up 450 miles away from where they had started out, and then they built new missions! Each mission was run by only two priests, all other Europeans being strictly excluded, so control was absolute. It wasn’t until the Jesuits resisted with arms a treaty of 1750 between Spain and Portugal which placed seven missions under Portuguese control that the extent of their power became obvious and their end in sight. There is definitely more to this life than just pigeon racing!
The little cock Sparrowhawk never even saw my birds until he was suddenly in the middle of a mass panic. He’d come in fast and low from the West over the scrubby pock-marked field using as always every inch of cover and flicked up and over the loft from behind some overgrown Elderberry trees. The youngsters on the ridge tiles didn’t see him coming at all. If he’d wanted one it would have been dead. He rolled over the fence and was gone before my pigeons got into top gear. But get into it they did. And how. Such speed! It was a perfect demonstration of the so-called “Flight or Fight” reaction where the body is instantly mobilised in life-threatening situations. Adrenaline is released in huge quantities, the heart rate shoots up and the flow of blood to the muscles is instant and dramatic. Should it be fight or flight, either way you need the muscles, working at their best, to survive.
We used to demonstrate this reaction to medical students using a technique called Plethysmography. I would tailor make a Latex sleeve which fitted around a students arm and was fixed into a bath of warm water which his arm went through. Any increase in the volume of the volunteer’s arm caused by increased blood flow to the muscles would be recorded via air transmission (there were no strain gauges in those days) and recorded on a smoked drum or by a pen recorder. There are many ways to alter blood flow in a human subject, embarrassment and mental confusion being amongst them, but shock was by far the best.
My job was to stand on the bench, the other side of the half- opened door next to the subject’s back. With a 12 bore shotgun! When the lecturer said to the watching students the key words, “we now have a nice level baseline” I would give the subject the full benefit of both barrels being fired two feet away from his (it was never a her) ears. Of course I was firing blanks but it was spectacular to watch the “Flight or Fight” reaction take place.
It was always flight! Many a half asleep subject would break every connection attached to him, electrical or otherwise, and be yards away with the bath hanging off his arm before he quite realised what was happening. Reaction to totally unexpected events can be quite dramatic! The Health and Safety at Work Act stopped my fun with the shotgun and the crash of a biscuit tin full of broken glass being thrown to the floor proved a very poor substitute. Such a shame!
