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17
Sep
One of my fondest memories as a medical student was the period spent, when doing our obstetric block in 1973/74. About six to ten of us had to be resident in the old maternity hospital of Leeds General Infirmary, which at that time was an ancient separate building on sloping Hyde Terrace, whilst we did our mandatory number of deliveries. Although old and, as has since been found out, riddled with asbestos & demolished in 2001, there was something almost homely about this period spent with a group of other students, most of whom I had previously been unfamiliar with. We all had the same purpose to be there and it was our first experience of “being on call and resident”.
In my later career I did not always have such a good relationship with midwives (that is different story), but the group I crossed paths with during this time were special, friendly and helpful - as indeed were all the doctors and my co-students. I have observed that in a variety of walks of life that what made the experience enriching was far more due to one’s colleagues at the time rather than the nature of the work itself.
The very first patient I was allotted was an unmarried teenager. Time was spent beforehand getting to know our patients and their medical history, but apart from her age and marital status there was nothing at all unusual about this girl. A couple of nights later I delivered her baby without event. The next morning I went to visit her and she was facing the ward in a single bed at the end of a traditional “Florence Nightingale” ward of a double row of beds. As I approached her she said “It’s not fair; it’s just not fair of them to put me in the bed under the clock”. I didn’t understand at all until she explained that there was a Yorkshire superstition that if you were put in a bed under a clock in a hospital, you would be readmitted with the same “complaint” within 12 months.
17
Sep
It’s said that science will dehumanize people and turn them into numbers. That’s false, tragically false. Look for yourself. This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance, it was done by dogma, it was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods.
Science is a very human form of knowledge. We are always at the brink of the known; we always feel forward for what is to be hoped. Every judgment in science stands on the edge of error and is personal. Science is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible. In the end, the words were said by Oliver Cromwell: “I beseech you in the bowels of Christ: Think it possible you may be mistaken.”
I owe it as a scientist to my friend Leo Szilard, I owe it as a human being to the many members of my family who died here, to stand here as a survivor and a witness. We have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge and power. We have to close the distance between the push-button order and the human act. We have to touch people.
[Excerpt from “The Ascent of Man”.]
May seven tears in every week,
Touch the hollow of you cheek,
That I - signed with such a dew -
For the Lion’s share may sue
Of roses ever curled
Round the may-pole of the world.
Heavy riddles lie in this,
Sorrow’s sauce for every kiss.
2
May
Out of the chaos of my doubt
And the chaos of my art
I turn to you inevitably
As the needle to the pole
Turns . . . as the cold brain to the soul
Turns in its uncertainty;
So I turn and long for you;
So I long for you, and turn
To the love that through my chaos
Burns a truth,
And lights my path.
2
May
Coarse as the sun is blatant, the high spinach-
Coloured elms, the lawns a yellow matting
Of tired grass, disgust me and the netting
Of summer boughs that creak at every touch.
Of this hot breeze distract me; live apart,
And bring no love to me from other fields: my hands
Are empty as my blind lop-sided heart!
Lop-sided, for self pity like a curse
Turns all I see to ugliness: the lawns
A wilderness for lack of unicorns fades
The elm a tower for birds of paradise.
Nature! I hate you for you scorch my brain
And make me see my weakness yet again.
30
Apr
In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion; in order to serve men better, one has to hold them at a distance for a time.
Excerp from “The Minotaur”.
12
Apr
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
11
Apr
A new angel being shown round heaven. Once inside the gates the angel was led down a corridor, which had doors in it labelled with the world’s various religions and sects. The first couple of doors were passed-by without issue, but then there was a door behind which there was a loud noise coming from inside. I don’t now remember if it was the Shia Muslims or the Roman Catholics or some other group, but the angel paused and asked why this room was so noisy. “Oh”, said the guide, “they are having a huge party in there because they believe they are the only ones up here”.
3
Apr
A commuter in Dublin saw a man sitting beside the Liffey each morning as he went to work on the bus. One nice day he was early and got off the bus to walk the rest of the way. This man had somehow always intrigued him, so as he was about to walk past, he stopped and greeted the man telling he saw him every day and he wondered if he did anything to do with the river and how he put in his time there. The man looked up and answered: “Well some of the time I sits and thinks. But most of the time I just sits”.
29
Mar
But I find in the Nobel Award something more and something different from such recognition. It seems to me more the election of an individual, chosen from time to time from one nation or another, and selected by something like an act of grace, to fill a peculiar role and to become a peculiar symbol. A ceremony takes place, by which a man is suddenly endowed with some function which he did not fill before. So the question is not whether he was worthy to be so singled out, but whether he can perform the function which you have assigned to him: the function of serving as a representative, so far as any man can be of thing of far greater importance than the value of what he himself has written.
1948 Nobel Prize for Literature
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