There are all kinds of collectors. I collect old doctors. More accurately, I collect stories about old doctors. The tales I like best are about the wild frontiersmen of Irish medicine; the old timers who worked hard, lived hard and left legends behind them. The late Dermot Healy liked these stories too, and he told me one about the doctor who attended his mother at his birth, which was at home. His mother was in labour and the doctor was called.
The old GP timed the contractions and decided that the delivery was some hours off. Then he rolled into the bed beside Mrs Healy with instructions about when to wake him, and passed out. Of course he was far gone in drink.
A lot of these old country doctors did like their booze, and as they were on call all the time they drank on the job. A whiskey would be left on the kitchen table at each house call, and they did a lot of house calls.
They would not last five minutes today and would be reported to everyone, but people were more tolerant in what Eamonn Kelly called “my father’s time”.
A cardiologist friend of mine was on holidays on an island when a deputation arrived at his house to ask him to see a sick woman. The island GP, it would seem, was drunk, and not for the first time. My friend was happy to help out. The island GP must have gone to college with the Healy family doctor, because when my friend called to the house he was not only drunk, but he had collapsed beside the woman in the bed.
She was sent off to hospital on the mainland and when the boat arrived to take the cardiologist off the island a week later, he was delighted to see her disembark, looking happy. She was most grateful. “Weren’t you great to come out doctor; and wasn’t the other doctor great to come out too, drunk as he was?”
They seemed to be as fond of the bed as they were of the bottle. One Donegal GP would play cards all night and lie in bed. The patients would be ushered into the bedroom where he would sit in a fog of cigarette smoke, scribbling certs. He would like to let a good crowd of cars build up outside the house so he could look busy for the new doctor in the village.
Another GP had a pub, and had a reputation for being an easy touch for a sick cert. A nice young librarian, new to the town, got felled by backache one Monday morning. In innocence he produced a cert from the publican doctor, and was nearly fired on the spot; a Monday cert from that publican doctor was the sure sign of a bowsie in that town.
In those days the dispensary doctor was marooned in the outposts, like a missionary. He – for it was usually a he – was on call all the time. He had none of the modern drugs that transformed medicine in the 1950s. He delivered babies, operated on kitchen tables, visited the sick and the dying, and patched up after accidents. He was exposed to TB, bad weather, madness and sheepdogs.That Donegal GP could suture up a laceration on a child’s face, while the child laughed along with him, and not leave a mark.
I knew some of these old boys and they had certain similarities. They were not used to being contradicted, and were very sure of themselves. I suppose professional isolation does that to you.
Some of them were steadfast members of the establishment, in the morally stifling world of the New Irish Republic, but some were not, and they often stood up to the priest or the garda. Their patients were their flock and they would defend them against all comers.
It is easy to look back at those men from the comfort of the 21st century with disapproval. "Well to me he's one of the heroes of this country," as Guy Clark wrote about an old wildcatter. Those isolated, proud men, increasingly joined by women, were the first members of the Medical CME groups to share education and knowledge. They were among the founders of the Irish College of General Practitioners, and of the out-of-hours co-ops that made rural practice viable.
Now that Irish general practice is falling apart, between financial cuts and neglect, it is time to spare a thought for the pioneers. From their hard outposts evolved a kind of excellence that has served the people of Ireland well for generations .
They were not all wild and drunken, most of them were sober and responsible, but the wild ones left the best stories. Pat Harrold is a GP in Nenagh, Co Tipperary. Muiris Houston will return next week.