Tweespruit to the Rescue
Morris Hirsch began his varied checkered career, starting off in March 1939 to the refrain of 'Tweespruit here I come.'
Morris Hirsch began his career in March 1939 singing 'Tweespruit here I come.'
"Jo'burg is pretty
And so is Capetown city
But Tweespruit's the place for me!"
Tweespruit (Two Streams) was a typical Free State dorp (village), lots of grassland with bitterly cold winters. Although the mountains of Basutoland were not far away, it wasn't a scenic spot. The doctor had died. His widow was a charming, attractive redhead, quite young, which surprised Morris, considering her late husband's age. She had advertised for a locum in the hope of selling it as a functioning practice, although there was nothing to stop any doctor starting up independently.
She decided it would be improper to share the isolated house with the locum tenens and had moved in with local farming friends. She visited Morris periodically to answer any queries, to be assured that the practice was being held together and he had what he needed: both medicines and meals.
(His swotting buddy Isaac Sher had got the contract initially and had thrown it up for a job at a clinic in Alexandra Township on the outskirts of Johannesburg treating the mostly poor Black population, where he stayed for the next fifteen years and then emigrated to Israel!)
Houseman remuneration for the seventy plus hour work week was five pounds a month, but he lived-in, for which there was no charge. The practice Locum contract was also standard, two guineas (£2/2/0) per day; yes, per DAY, all found, meaning board and lodging provided. He'd been a hospital locum for three weeks that had netted him only £3/10/0.
Morris had never lived alone in a house in the country. It was about a quarter of a mile from the nearest neighbor. The practice was not busy–sometimes there was nobody there. He'd walk out into the big backyard and shout inanities to the vegetable garden to no purpose, of course, except to feel better. He realised how gregarious he was. 'JO'BURG is really the place for me'.
It was the first time he had to charge and collect fees. He found it embarrassing. In his career he couldn't handle it and delegated it. But in Tweespruit he was the whole show: doctor, nurse, biller, cashier, bookkeeper and debt collector....
It was the first time he was alone to contend with medical problems without anyone within easy reach to consult. He under took operations he'd never performed or even watched.
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.
Photo: https://www.free-state-info.co.za/provinces/town/413/tweespruit