Medicine, Music and Meditation
When Morris Hirsch worked in the ENT department the workload was usually heavy. But sometimes operating was more leisurely when a case was time consuming.
When Morris Hirsch worked in the ENT department the workload was usually heavy. But sometimes operating was more leisurely when a case was time consuming. The anesthetist, Speedy Bentil, would produce his banjo and sing, all the while keeping a watchful eye on the patient and apparatus. Morris was never distracted. On the contrary he and the two nurses always enjoyed Speedy's performance.
Speedy Bentil had a reputation with the girls. He radiated joy to his coterie of admirers. His name was Hymie, (an anglicization of Chaim, meaning "life"). Speedy also had a very pronounced hooked Jewish snozzle, which he also changed, by surgery. He began his anesthetic career with Morris, who taught him to intubate the patient, an essential procedure in all ENT cases to ensure an unobstructed airway.
Their paths crossed occasionally in the army but rarely thereafter until Morris' return to South Africa after 30 years in private practice in Rhodesia. Speedy had had a long and successful career. Morris was surprised by Speedy's conservative, though opulent home and his homely musical family who performed together. In retirement, Speedy taught Transcendental Meditation, made famous by the Beatles!
The historical novel Whitewashed Jacarandas and its sequel Full of Possibilities are both available on Amazon as paperbacks and eBooks.
These books are inspired by Diana's family's experiences in small town Southern Rhodesia after WWII.
Dr. Sunny Rubenstein and his Gentile wife, Mavourneen, along with various town characters lay bare the racial arrogance of the times, paternalistic idealism, Zionist fervor and anti-Semitism, the proper place of a wife, modernization versus hard-won ways of doing things, and treatment of endemic disease versus investment in public health. It's a roller coaster read.
References:
Excerpt from Dr. Morris Isaac Hirsch's Unpublished Memoirs. Hirsch Archives.