A Head On...And a Bow Out?
At the end of his first year medicine, Morris Hirsch decided to take a short break with friends who operated a hotel in Breyten in the Eastern Transvaal.
At the end of his first year medicine, Morris Hirsch decided to take a short break with friends who operated a hotel in Breyten in the Eastern Transvaal.
They took the train. It was traveling at full speed when a Chinese motorcyclist, inexplicably, without any attempt to stop, rode full tilt into their coach. Catapulted forward over the handlebars he crashed head first into the metal bracket at the coach end.
When the train stopped Morris and his friends raced back to the road. The body and clothing were unscathed. But, his skull was neatly split open, his brain strewn on the tarmac.
Morris spend the holiday serving drinks at the bar, having a few himself, as he wrestled with the question of whether medicine was the career for him?
His options had previously been discussed over the family's dinner table ad infinitum. He was keen on atomic physics as his goal. His father asked, "And how do you think you will earn a living?" He pooh poohed the idea of an academic life, a lectureship and ultimate professorship or a research fellowship. There was no financial joy to be found there, depending on the government or a university board for employment. "Depend on yourself" was his dictum. He would be paying the bills.
So it had to be a profession: but what? Law was out because languages were Morris' weakness although he could argue well enough. Architecture was also out. He had no drawing aptitude or much aesthetic sense. Accountancy! What a boring prospect. Medicine involved biology which was not his forte and the nature of the work left him squeamish. "If you don't like it after the first year you can change to something else. Your first year subjects are general enough to give you the option," had been his father's reasoning.
Morris knew very well that Jewish families' wanted to have 'a son a doctor'. His orthodox mother from Lithuania had made many household economies over the years to afford his education. He could not let them down. "Give it a try," his father had urged.
Now was his chance to change course. On the other hand, he'd easily made the cut into the second year. Most importantly, the zoology dissections had reassured him, but...the memory of the gruesome accident plagued him all through the Christmas holidays...
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.
Reference:
Excerpt from Dr. Morris Isaac Hirsch's Memoirs. Hirsch Archives.
Postcard: Hirsch Archives.