| Description | Interview with Dr Robert Paterson, recorded on 5 September 1986 by Elizabeth Olson
Transcript of Interview :
O Why did you come to Aberdeen University Dr Paterson?
P Because I lived in Aberdeen and was educated in Aberdeen.
O Which school did you go to?
P Aberdeen Grammar.
O Had you father been a graduate?
P He was a graduate of Edinburgh but he came to Aberdeen as a teacher at Aberdeen Grammar in Modern Languages.
O So you'd spent your life in Aberdeen itself?
P From the age of six.
O Did you sit the bursary comp?
P No.
O Did you have any help financially in going to university or where you just supported by your family?
P I was supported by my father.
O No Carnegie grants, nothing like that?
P No.
O Why did you choose medicine?
P That's a difficult question because originally my idea was to go into dentistry but in those days there was no dental school here and I did the first two years here and then my father suggested it might be a good idea to take medicine and then go to Dundee afterwards. Well that never materialised, once I'd taken medicine I quite liked medicine and stayed with medicine.
O Do you remember any of the teachers that you had at the university?
P 'Daddy' Low.
O What do you remember about him?
P I thought he was a very pleasant soul, nice sense of humour. Then Roy Strathdee.
O He taught chemistry?
P That's right.
O What do you remember about him, he would have been a young man?
P He was a great sportsman, he was a great Gordonian. There are quite a few I should remember. Sir John Learmonth.
O He would have been surgery?
P Yes. Stanley Davidson.
O What did he teach?
P Medicine: He was one of the kingpins.
O Did you enjoy your first year when it was pre-clinical, Chemistry, Physics, Biology that you studied?
P No, because I had domestic troubles at home. I could not get on with my stepmother and I had a very bad first three years.
O And you still stayed at home.
P I still stayed at home and I came down in my second professional. I had to do anatomy in two years.
O Which was more than you would have enjoyed I should think?
P No, I didn't like that but on the other hand after that I did quite well. I never understood why I didn't do well because I never did anything not to work. I didn't go out drinking or anything like that and I just don't know why. I think it was partly because of the very difficult situation at home. Then after I got into third year medicine without line shooting, I did quite well, I did very well and walked it after that.
O Perhaps you found it more interesting then?
P No I think it was just this bit of trouble at home, I had a very difficult time.
O Do you remember Professor MacLeod who taught you physiology?
P J J R MacLeod, the insulin boy.
O What was he like?
P I quite liked him, a pleasant soul. I didn't have much of him, obviously.
O Did Cruickshank teach you?
P Alan Cruickshank's father?
O E W H the professor that succeeded MacLeod, did he teach you as well?
P No. I'm sorry I'm getting mixed up with Cruickshank who was a bacteriologist.
O No I was thinking of the one who came in 1935 to Cruickshank.
P I can't remember seeing much of him to be honest, I don't know why.
O Then you got Professor David Campbell for Materia Medica. Was he a character?
P Yes, I think so.
O Did you enjoy his classes?
P I think they were all characters. I did enjoy them. It's a terrible thing to say but I don't think they've got quite the characters now that they had then.
O What do you remember about Mat Med, remember the practicals, pharmacology?
P In those days you used to have to make up all sorts of calamine lotion and its so much different now.
O It was all done with the hands?
P Yes and of course when I went into practice we still did it in practice in those days, these were the pre-antibiotic days.
O When did you join practice?
P I went into practice in 1940.
O You would still have been, as you say, before the antibiotics, they came in about …?
P They came in about 1942/3 because I was in the forces then.
O Did you find the coming of the antibiotics dramatic?
P Yes. I was in the forces then and we had a bit and trouble and they were marvellous.
O How do you mean?
P You could get rid of septus which you couldn't get before and of course it was very good in practice when I went back to practice but I suppose in the forces we had it before you would have had in practice.
O It would have made quite a dramatic impression on you?
P Tremendous.
O Did you have a lot of new things to learn or were there only a few drugs in the first place?
P It was a gradual thing, you hardly noticed it. M & B was the first one, M & B 693 and I don't know if it's of any interest but I was probably one of the first to ever have the original sulphonomicd I'd got a throat in my final year and there was a Dr Innes who was my doctor and I was desperate because in those days if you didn't sit your exam you started the whole thing again and he got me some of the original sulphonomide called proctasol and what was interesting it helped me get through because they hadn't seen proctasol and in those days it mixed up the haemoglobin and you went almost blue and purple and I had enough sense to read up about it so I could tell them, but it saved me from having to sit again.
O Then you'd have had Professor Shennan for pathology or was it Professor Young?
P Professor Young.
O Just as a young man then?
P Yes.
O Do you remember him then?
P I thought a lot of all of them but I liked him very much.
O Then there was John Cruickshank from bacteriology as you mentioned?
P I wasn't too keen on him.
O Was he older or less interesting?
P It was just that I took a dislike to him yet I had no reason to take a dislike to him.
O Then you had Stanley Davidson for medicine?
P Yes. He was quite a character.
O How many students would there have been in your class?
P I think there was about seventy to eighty.
O Of that how many would have been women, roughly?
P Ten, I can't really say.
O A small number. Were you lectured to or did you have tutorials?
P From the clinical side you had tutorials but you had quite a lot of lectures.
O Were the groups big or manageable?
P I thought they were very manageable, I thought they were very reasonable. That's why I thought Aberdeen was very good. When I went down to England afterwards I found that there was very little that I hadn't done at university that I needed to do down there. I think part of it was, and it's important, but you must remember I lived in Aberdeen so I used to go to the hospital on holiday so I actually did one fortnight as a house surgeon as a student so when I went to England I thought the teaching had been marvellous.
O As a student what was the attitude of the students to the lecturers? Did you feel that they were friends of yours or that they were a different generation?
P I thought they were friendly really.
O Did the students rag them if they weren't pleased with the standard of teaching?
P No, I don't think they did.
O Were any of the staff particularly eccentric?
P I can't remember.
O Not that you remember, so they can't have been really. And you lived at home. Did you find that you could socialise much with other students or was most of your life just being at home?
P I could socialise but there again I had a very difficult time. I wasn't allowed to join the Union. It was really a very difficult situation, but you can understand that would have made a tremendous difference to me.
O So there would have been no way of meeting other people if you weren't allowed to be in the Union?
P I knew a lot from school you see.
O Did you take part in sport?
P I played for Grammar FPs. There again I gave that up early because of domestic problems. I loved rugger. I was very fond of rugger.
O You didn't join the University rugger club?
P No. In those days you tended to play for you FPs side. On the other hand there was fourteen FPs in those days in the University side.
O Did you find that you were hard up as a student? Did you get lots of pocket money?
P No. I got two bob a week. The situation was desperate.
O Enough clothes and things, but this was a personal idiosyncrasy of the family, all students weren't like that?
P No.
O Did you find that other students looked down on you because you hadn't much money?
P No, I don't think they knew.
O You spent your vacations in the hospital furthering your education, you didn't work as a student?
P I used to do the odd Post Office sorting.
O Was that lucrative?
P It was lucrative.
O Did you get to keep the money and spend it on yourself or was it for books?
P No. It went home.
O Did the position of women students impress you at all? Did you think it was easy for them or difficult for them or didn't interest you?
P I didn't see it was any more difficult for them than anybody else.
O Did you find that the political climate affected the university, you know you were just before the war?
P I don't honestly think so, I would say it was more affected 38 after Lent but I don't think I thought much about it before 1938.
O Were you conscious of the arguments about whether we should rearm in preparation to fight Hitler? Was that being talked about or was it too far away?
P I had fairly decided views then because I felt that we were wrong, that we should have rearmed sooner.
O Did you feel the League of Nations was of any interest?
P Not really.
O Did you feel bitter about that or you just didn't think about it?
P I didn't think about it.
O Your were too busy with your own life. Did Communism raise its head in Aberdeen in those days?
P No, not to me.
O What about the depression?
P It sounds a terrible thing to say but I don't think I noticed it. Except I noticed it later when I thought back. People used to come and clear the snow and they used to be in rags but I didn't think much of it at the time.
O No, you just accepted it as part of life. Did the rise of fascism make much interest?
P No. Not until the war really.
O Was it difficult to find a job when you graduated?
P No.
O Did you stay in Aberdeen for your first job?
P No, I left straight away, for the obvious reasons, to get away from home.
O Was it easy to find a job in the south?
P Yes.
O How did you do that?
P I applied for several. I went to my first job because I met another chap who was a student with me and we both did the job together but I didn't intend to do that job originally.
O Did you have many foreign students in your class at the university?
P Not really many. There was Prendegast who was a Jamaican and there was a West African and that's about all I can remember.
O It wouldn't have struck you if they were well integrated or lonely?
P You didn't think about that.
O Were you at university at the time that the hospital moved from Woolmanhill? Do you remember that?
P I do remember that because it was tricky.
O Why?
P Getting from place to place.
O As a student?
P Yes. I bought a £9 car and I used to take my pals, I charged them half price bus fares, and it was very helpful. There was a lot of moving around between Foresterhill and Woolmanhill and then up to the fever hospitals at Woodend. It was very handy then.
O Did you like the new hospital at Foresterhill?
P Yes.
O It was felt to be a good thing?
P I thought it was a good thing.
O Was the Woolmanhill hospital very crowded latterly? Were you in it when it was occupied by medical and surgical beds?
P Yes, but I also did quite a lot of it at the new place, Foresterhill.
O I just wondered how the conditions for patients compared? Did that strike you at the time?
P It didn't actually you just thought the new place was much better.
O Was there anything that you particularly felt you wanted to tell us that you remembered?
P Except that I thought the education was very good. I moved around a lot after because I was all over the place during the war and I found most things I had touched on at the University.
O In the war were you as a general practitioner or did they put you to all sorts of different things?
P Originally I was an RMO in Ack Ack and I eventually joined West African forces. I went to field ambulance there and it was the same as everybody else, the only snag was we walked everywhere. I should say I walked ten hundred miles in Burma because they carry everything the West Africans. We had no transport, we used a short range penetration, went off for a month on our own on air supply and then came back, but it was quite an experience. Then I was very lucky, I felt that one of these days the MOs going to get shot so I applied for grading and I went for grading as a specialist at the hospital and that was marvellous because I got trained and then the war finished and I packed it up and came back to Buton.
O What did you specialise in in the hospital?
P I was a physician really.
O There you were in General Practice in Burton after that?
P Yes.
O You found your university education was enjoyable at the university and was valuable for the rest of your life?
P Yes.
O You enjoyed Professor McKerron?
P Except he wasn't as good as Dugald Baird.
O But then Dugald Baird was a surgeon whereas McKerron was a General Practitioner/Obstetrician in the times when you couldn't operate to the same extent because of sepsis could you?
P That's a tremendous change. Sepsis was very difficult. I mean, in those days if a women had a temperature there was hell let loose, you had to isolate it and all that.
O Did you attend maternity cases in the old Matte [Maternity Hospital] at Castle Street?
P Yes because we lived in digs opposite. We did about six weeks.
O What did you do then?
P We stayed in the digs and any cases we went across to the maternity hospital.
O Did you go on the district as well?
P Yes.
O Was that an experience?
P It was. It was very good except that you got a lift there and always had to walk back!
O Were the conditions of life of the poor people bad or much better than other places you've seen?
P No. The conditions, if you really saw the poor, all over was pretty bad, even in places like Burton-on -Trent, it was shocking, but Aberdeen, Edinburgh, some of the conditions there were terrible. I think this has improved tremendously.
O What do you think has improved that? The Social Security, availability of money?
P Yes, and the National Health in a way, and then of course we got rid of infection. There is great controversy at the moment about whether we're taking too many into hospital but my general opinion is that, on an average I don't think there are many [doctors] terminate labour without some good reason because nowadays you mustn't let it go too long afterwards. It's not good for them and I know there's publicity about it but I don't think, talking from personal experience around the Midlands, I think they are pretty good. The Press don't do it any good I don't think. And that's where I think that medically the press is not so good.
O It's easy to sensationalise things isn't it?
P Yes. I had an old patient of mine who was in the Poor Law Hospital in the old days, which is a long, long time ago. I was talking to her, she died about four years ago, but I was talking to her and in those days the vagrants used to go into the Poor Law Hospital and if they died then their bodies went to Birmingham Medical School. She was telling me the story about when they sent the wrong body. That would be terrible, now that and all they did was sent a chap on a motorcycle to fetch them and turn the ambulance around, no trouble. But nowadays if that got in the Press it would be murder and I think there's a lot of fuss. I think on an average people are pretty genuine.
O I think people do their best really. Thank you very much Dr Paterson.
End of Interview
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