anonymous
29th October 2019
MY STORY - 2
MY STORY - 2
DR SHANTILAL J. MEHTA
I have never believed in didactic
lectures and hence I spent most of my time working in hospitals, attending
operations and helping generally. In 1905, Sir William Osler, the great
physician of world-wide repute had said in his inaugural address at Oxford when
he was appointed Professor of Medicine, that God had given human beings two
ears and one tongue and therefore, while examining a patient, the most
important thing to do is to listen to him. Seventy-five per cent of the
diagnosis of a case will be given out by the patient in his description of the
illness.
The final Fellowship examination
showed how important it is to take this history and then do a physical
examination. Only one or two per cent of the diagnosis may require such aids as
radiograms, laboratory tests and now the whole rigmarole of ultra-sound, CAT
scan, NMR etc.
To illustrate this, let me quote an
incident. On every Thursday at 12.30 p.m. at St. Bartholomew Hospital, on the
surgical side (surgical conference), a clinical meeting used to be held where
one or two cases of interest were brought. At the surgical conference would be
all the surgeons of that hospital, all the residents and all the senior
residents. One day an assistant surgeon brought a patient who had a swelling of
the upper end of the leg bone.
The custom was that the senior surgeon
gave his views first and then the rest of us would follow. He examined the
patient for half a minute and palpated the swollen area. Even without seeing
the x-ray plates brought by the assistant, the senior surgeon diagnosed it as
hydatid cyst of the bone and said that it gave a double thrill. We thought the
old man had gone potty. How the dickens did he get a double thrill—one cyst
hitting another small cyst through the bones, we wondered. The next day Dr Girling
Bell whose case it was, operated. After the operation it did turn out to be a
hydatid cyst. The senior surgeon had developed his fingers to such a nicety
that none of us could feel what he felt.
I got through my final Fellowship in
1930 at the first attempt.