Urology
Morris Hirsch found the Urology Department depressing although the job entailed both European (in a newly completed ten story modern building) and Non-European wards.
Morris Hirsch found the Urology Department depressing although the job entailed both European (in a newly completed ten story modern building) and Non-European wards.
Most inpatients were old men with enlarged prostates and there were some prostatic cancer cases. They had suprapubic tubes draining into bottles that permeated the ward with the smell of urine.
After drainage, the prostate was removed, followed by still more drainage. (The refined techniques and medical adjuncts of today have transformed the operation. Post war developments, such as kidney transplants and various ureteric reconstructive procedures, have also added much interest to the specialty.)
Outpatients were mostly younger men with urethral stricture, the result of old gonorrhoea, requiring periodic dilating to ease the urinary obstruction. This was done under not very effective local analgesia, by squeezing analgesic gel into the urethra. Also an unpleasant task. Gonorrhoea was greatly feared. The acute dysuria (pain on urinating) was like pissing razor blades. With no specific cure, it ran its course. (Penicillin was later to provide dramatic relief and render stricture of the urethra a rare occurrence. It is not surprising that penicillin, together with the Pill, paved the way to the sexual revolution.)
Cystoscopy (looking down the urethra and into the bladder through a rigid metal instrument) was mainly for diagnostic purposes but afforded limited correction of lesions by (electric) cautery. Other kidney, ureteric, bladder and testicular operations were much less frequent.
Morris' outlook was jaundiced by being excluded by the junior consultant, a German Jewish refugee, by the name of Weichardt, who evidently had little private practice and hogged whatever operating was going in both units. He won some showdowns but there was continuous tension.
All good things come to an end, as do the miseries. He moved on...
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: Cartoon Stock Cartoon Collections Company