| Description | Interview with Professor Douglass W. Taylor recorded on 7 September 1990 by Colin McLaren
Transcript of Interview:
McL Can I begin by asking you why you came to Aberdeen University in the first place?
T In Aberdeen as opposed to any other university?
McL Yes.
T Simply because it was scarcely contemplated that coming, as I did, from Peterhead Academy, why would one go elsewhere? Unless you had very particular reasons such as close relatives. One of my classmates did his medicine in Edinburgh for family reasons and out of a quite unduly large proportion of my class at school who went to university, I think he was the only one who didn't go to Aberdeen. In those days it wasn't contemplated to go elsewhere.
McL Why did you think this was? Are we talking here of a matter of local pride or a lack of imagination?
T Possibly a lack of imagination or possibly - now I'm thinking ahead to when I came back on the staff here because I was on the staff for 12 years right through the 50's and amongst other things I sat on the Medical Admissions Council and we just didn't take to from elsewhere and this was on the assumption that it was reciprocated. It was very much what became I think recognised as Tom Taylor's concept of the University for the northern half of Scotland. I think that's probably the real answer. I don't think it's lack of imagination. If you had had intention of doing something that couldn't be had at Aberdeen, you would've gone.
McL When you came, knowing that you were going to do medicine, presumably you weren't in need of the degree of guidance that a student entering Arts or Science might have required?
T Well I was anomalous if you like in as much as had it not been for the war I would have done an Arts degree first.
McL Oh I see.
T In fact I did one year. Now we were jolly lucky, of course, in those days to get any time at all, but I did manage to squash in my first year at university in the Arts Faculty and as I say that had been three years before or five years later than I would have done a classics degree before I did Medicine. I'd always intended, and I always wanted to do, Medicine but my headmaster said because I was a reasonable Classicist and in those days they like to have Classicists - before they abolished the chair at Aberdeen - and he said "Look" (and he himself was a scientist, he was a mathematics-physics man from Glasgow) "don't worry, you'll do it standing on your head, go on with your Classics", so I did. So I had a year at King's and then I decided I would do it then if I got the opportunity, which I did. But there was no guidance in the Arts faculty, absolutely none. They simply filled in a little card and sent to Harold Sinclair who was then the deputy secretary. I doubt if he even read it. He just sent it back ticked off.
McL Looking back on your medical training. Is it possible for you to objectively evaluate it as a preparation for professional life?
T Well, when I went into the Army, which of course I did as a medical officer, I very quickly - and I have compared notes with classmates of mine on this - I very quickly realised that I had been well trained. I don't think one gave much thought to it as a student.
McL Would you like to pick out the factors or the features that helped you to form this conclusion?
T That I had been well trained?
McL Yes.
T Simply watching people from other medical schools. I don't know if you want names but ...?
McL I think more the areas in which you felt the training was actually better.
T Look, I think you'd get every member of my year who served in the Forces to agree that some of the people from the Southern Isles schools were absolutely abysmal. But compared with what one could properly call reputable schools, I think it is fair to say that Aberdeen graduates were well trained. And I remember, I spent a fair amount of time York Military Hospital and there was, amongst the QA's …
McL Sorry, a QA?
T Is a Queen Alexandra …, I can't remember now the full title but they were the Nursing Sisters and she would have been, in civil terms, an Assistant Matron and she had been out in Singapore and got out just before the Japanese came in and I remember her, she was a dragon of the rank of the very first order - and she said to me just casually one morning, "did I know Eric Cruickshank?". Eric Cruickshank was eventually to become the Professor of Medicine in Jamaica and he was an Aberdeen graduate 1937 who had been whipped off after two years and this woman, who didn't give praise lightly, said he was by far the best medical officer ever she'd ever struck. So I think it was this, Aberdeen medical training had a good reputation. Quite apart from what we might have felt about it in comparison with chaps that we were brushing up against.
McL Are there any other names that you associate with the achievement of this standard in the medical school?
T You mean as teachers?
McL Yes.
T Well I think there were a number of really, in their different ways, very good teachers. I suppose the earliest one that was struck was R.D. Lockhart in Anatomy who always made a tremendous impression on a raw second year class. As a senior student, it didn't appeal to me so much. I remember he came back one year and lectured to the medical society when I was a clinical student, probably fifth year, something like that and, you know, one wondered why one had been so impressed three years earlier. On the other hand, it would have suited many people right on and he certainly had a vast influence on second year students. That was a very good article by Ian Olson, the obituary notice in the Review, I thought that was a perceptive article. (I get the Review sent out to keep in touch). He was one. The best former lecturer, the best performance as a lecturer, was without any doubt in my mind Robert Aitkens who was Professor of Medicine and they were just polished performances. There was nothing theatrical about them, they were just, as I say, polished gentlemanly, performances.
McL How would you characterise the relationship between staff and students?
T Very formal, not on the whole, entirely comfortable.
McL Would you like to enlarge on that?
T Well I'm thinking again back to having subsequently taught for nearly forty years and particularly when I went to New Zealand, of course, the degree of informality between members of staff themselves and between staff and students was much much greater than it was in Aberdeen when I was a student or even as a member of staff. And I remember the first time I came back was study leave in 1969. I spent about half my time working in London and it was much more formal. Collegial contacts were more formal than I had in the previous seven years got accustomed to but there were very very few members of staff if any you might have known vaguely well on reasonably close terms as a clinical student say junior registrar or something like that but I think most students would have regarded staff-student contacts - in the current phrase - as a fairly daunting business.
McL To what extent were the broader ethical aspects of the profession a matter of debate and discussion amongst students?
T My recollection is, very little. As final year students we had precisely six lectures from Sir David Campbell on, what shall we say, professional ethics if you like, including the legal aspects, after all he was President of the GMC at the time and he was well aware of all these things. No, I think, and I've been particularly interested, of course, because Dunedin has just established sort of formal ethical set up if you like and has just appointed Alastair Campbell who is a Divine from Edinburgh to take a chair in, what do they call it, Medical Bioethics. Now that just didn't exist at all, you learned how to behave from your teachers. And there were some who were recognised as models not to be followed and some who were recognised to be the opposite who were really very very good, caring, sympathetic people. I don't know if you want names?
McL It would be certainly, of the latter, it would be helpful to know who provided role models.
T Well, I can certainly remember colleagues of mine who went into practice locally who said that they would send patients, for example, to Dr R.J. Duthie who was the cardiologist just because, whether or not he could give them the effective treatment, just seeing him did them good. He was just a very nice thoughtful, approachable person. I worked with him actually for four months after I came back from the army when one did sort of refresher courses. He was one. The man that in my time was always known as "Old Pop Henry" was another who influenced many people. He was "an honorary" as we would have called it.
McL What does an honorary …?
T An honorary was in those days before 1948 someone who acted as a consultant in his private practice in the afternoons and taught medical students in the mornings and that was the general pattern you see before 1948.
McL You mention 1948 and I just wondered to what extent as well as varies of ethics, that to what extent there was a political awareness amongst the students or, if you like, a broad social awareness or did for example the events of 46, 47 and 48 take them unawares?
T I think this would have depended a lot upon the particular student or group of students. I happened to be interested and as a student was a member of the society that was for better or worse known as the Plan for Progress Group and which would have been, I suppose, a broadly based socialist society. Not formally officially affiliated to Labour Party politics, but on the left. And the society meetings where we discussed these things. I remember writing an essay from what we called Public Health and would now be called Social Medicine. Quite specifically on the coming National Health Service, pro and con, but possibly we wouldn't have been interested. It very much, I think, depended on the individual student and who your friends were and what you - the two things go together. You made friends with people who …
McL Well did you in fact make friends within the faculty or did your friendships span the faculties?
T Not a great deal did they span the faculties. Of course again you have to remember that the faculty distribution was quite unusual for most of my university career in as much as unless you had a technical career as it were, Medicine, Engineering, Radio-Physics, then you were in the army and the Arts Faculty you see was virtually denuded of men after, well it was you weren't called up till your group came up and so there were quite a number of men who got in one year and a reasonable number who got in two years but there would have been very very few third and fourth year male students in the Arts Faculty. And so, well my wife in fact was an Arts student and we when she was a final year Arts student and I was a final year Medical student so that sort of relationship spanned the faculties but perhaps others not to the same extent. It's not easy to generalise because in for example certain societies that you would expect to be broadly based, you did get to know other faculty students but I think almost inevitably the Medical course being what it is, closer friendships tend to develop within the Faculty because after all you're there for a couple of years after everybody else as it were.
McL Where did you stay when you were a student?
T I stayed in what I think was probably the most remarkable set of digs in Aberdeen.
McL Where was that?
T This was in 3, Queen's Terrace and I think anyone who stayed in Queen's Terrace in those days would agree that it was a very, a very interesting place. You learned a great deal about human nature very quickly at the age of 18. It was a largish boarding house - it's now part of the Marcliffe Hotel - and it contained not only students but a number of people in business. I can think of three people who were in insurance for example, that kind of thing. So it wasn't the usual student digs. It had shall we say a cross section of humanity. And it was extremely interesting in many ways. That went 'done' on us, oh when I was two-thirds of the way through my second year as a Medical student that was my third year at university and I very quickly - as the others had too - to find other digs. And from being one of roughly 20, I went to be one of one which I didn't particularly enjoy although I was very well looked after. It cost 30 shillings a week. This landlady and her husband lived there, the children I think were, one was a medical laboratory technician and was on the RAMC, he in fact came back after the war and did Medicine and I can remember teaching him and there was a daughter too, I think, but you know the room was there and so she was prepared to take one student and she just looked after me well and fed me and made the things that she quickly learned to know that I liked and she asked me 30 bob a week. But in fact I only was there for one term and then I had another year in digs in Watson Street where the landlady's two sons were Engineering apprentices and I'm quite sure that they had, shall we say, work induced deafness because I've never heard a radio blare so loudly and so constantly for so many hours of the 24 as in that particular set of digs, that's what sticks out in my mind there. And then I spent my last two years in the Residence at Foresterhill which suited me just fine. Ever since I've been a very strong supporter of the students spending time in hall. I think the Foresterhill Residence was unusual in that it was primarily as you know built for senior Medical students doing their midwifery and their intensive clinic. But they always kept the top floor pretty well, so called, permanent residents of which I was one, but most of them being senior medics, the discipline didn't come into it. Well you couldn't for one thing because the door was open all hours of the 24 because people were used to getting up at 3 o'clock in the morning and bolt up the hill as fast as they could run if the telephone rang and so there weren't the usual cavils that so many students make about restrictive practices in Halls of Residence. I greatly enjoyed it.
McL Thinking of the time when you subsequently came on the staff here, how would you characterise the difference of the university then?
T Are you talking of the difference between …
McL Your days as a student and your view of the university in the staff side?
T I'm not quite sure what you have in mind.
McL Well had the university changed substantially by the time you joined the staff?
T No, no, I would have said not. Most of the people who taught me were still there. Certainly all the senior people were there and you were just on a somewhat different relationship with the people that you already knew. There hadn't been much change by the middle 50's. The university hadn't grown, I remember, reading again John Hargreave's book, when the first intimations came to the meeting of the General Council, and I agree that Tom Taylor was in fact quite obviously apprehensive about this.
McL You described the achievement of teaching here and the extent which you found yourself well prepared as a result of the teaching you got here, but viewing the university experience overall, how would you - how effective would you say there had been a preparation for professional life?
T Well again it was different and the difference comes back to the watershed of 1948. I, and all students of my vintage and earlier vintages were, for example, taught for a number of weeks in what was known as the dispensary and that was where you saw the staff that people … I continually say well, you know, hospital medicine doesn't prepare you for Practice but if you delete hospital medicine from say the Aberdeen Medical Course … You used to be sent out in pairs. There were a number of General Practitioners in the town who agreed to do so many days at the so-called, I don't know if you au fait of what the set-up was then. There was one in where the Civic Buildings in that courtyard that was cleared beside Professor Skene's house and there was another up Ashgrove Road. I think there were about three or four around the town and there would be a panel of General Practitioners who agreed to spend one, two mornings of say two hours running the dispensary and in fact teaching students. And teaching students involved sending them out in pairs to do domicillary visits and that was where you saw the chicken pox and the measles and the sore throats, this, that and the other of that ilk. Now that vanished because the social need for the dispensary vanished in 1948 and so you lost what, I think, most of my colleagues would have regarded as a valuable form of training. That was where you learned sort of teaching yourself to look into an ear and seeing if it was inflamed in a small child. You would be set out with the tools that you needed as it were, rather in the same way as London students used to be taught midwifery on the district. They just went out with a midwife and got stuck in. So I think the situation really did change didactically from 1948 onwards with the social change.
McL Thank you very much indeed.
T One thing I should perhaps mention thinking back to teaching, perhaps at this end I talked about the influence of R.D. Lockhart talked about my view of Robert Aitken as a formal lecturer the charisma of Dugald Baird, of course, which was very obvious particularly if you shared an interest in socio-political medicine as some of us did but of course he was also recognised as being an obstetrician of eminence although the unit that grew up after I went on to the staff the social medicine unit as it were the Obstetric Medicine Unit didn't exist in anything like that form in the 1940's.
McL Is there anything more you want to say on Baird?
T No, I might be slightly prejudiced by the fact that it wasn't my subject and I knew very quickly that it wasn't. Another person who for me might have acted, if you want to use the term, "role model" was A G Anderson. Perhaps unlike most unlike students I was deeply interested in Neurology. I had been interest in Neuro-Anatomy as a second year student in the Department with, in particular, Gilbert Hamilton who taught us, and this carried right through and A.G. was the Consultant Neurologist, in my time, and although many people were influenced by the practitioner to patient relation of people like Bob Hendry, if I had continued Clinical Medicine instead of going to Physiology, I would in fact have been a Neurologist. I knew, we talked about going to university, I knew about the age of 15 that I was going to be an academic. Never had the slightest ambition to be anything else. Within medicine, it was simply a question of finding the right subject.
McL Thank you very much.
END OF INTERVIEW
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