ONE MAN'S MEDICINE

by Morris Gibson ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 1983

With a foreword by James Herriot and invitingly close in tone: the homey, amusing early adventures of a Scottish G.P. When we pick up Gibson's story, he's 22 and about to graduate from Glasgow University; we follow him into wartime service, marriage to a fellow student, and their establishment (with a baby daughter) in the port city of Hull. Not that all went smoothly. Gibson's early experience, in reed school and in practice, was colored by the absence as yet of antibiotics; sulfa medicine was just coming into use, and penicillin wasn't quite available. So Gibson was on hand when old men and babies could first be saved from pneumonia, and venereal disease (though still not minor) no longer had to be a catastrophe. Throughout his career, Gibson admits to being plagued by obstetrics. At his first home delivery, he was coached by a large, cheerful neighbor of the mother (""we'll show you whit this is a' aboot""), while his equally neophyte assistant stepped into the chamber pot and thus fell into the patient's bed. From then on, Gibson gladly gave way to the midwives. There were dark times, too: close friends and neighbors who were sailors on trawlers going out of Hull went down at sea, leaving large families for Gibson to try to comfort; a beautiful, reserved young woman died from septic abortion, prompting her bewildered elderly parents to die shortly thereafter. Gibson's tales are warm and true to the era--and worth continuing into later times.

Pub Date: March 1, 1983

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Beaufort

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1983

Categories: NONFICTION