Dr Gordon's Casebook by Richard Gordon

Author:Richard Gordon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2008-11-04T07:42:11+00:00

JULY

1 JULY

‘The English winter – ending in July to recommence in August.’ Byron got it right, at least until 8.30 a.m.

‘Good morning, Mr Cowley. What a lovely day! Had your holiday yet?’

‘No, Doctor, that’s why I’ve come. You know how me and the wife are always careful over our health?’

‘Of course. You wear crash helmets for your ride-on mower.

Admirable.’

Mr Cowley, dark, neat, comfortable house overlooking Pilgrim’s Way, runs office-supply business. Small, brown-haired wife subservient as a spaniel. Regular patient, in waiting-room plays musical chairs to avoid touch, breath, undefined miasmas from fellow-patients, gets on Mrs Shakespear’s nerves. Gather from his wife that on return from surgery Mr Cowley immediately strips, has clothes laundered, takes bath, probably adds pint or two of Jeyes’ Fluid. He would seem concerned about germs.

‘Though of course, Doctor, this is the salubrious season – ’

‘Salubrious? You’re joking. Haven’t you thought about the perils of summer? Do you realize that wasps and bees claim five British lives a year?

Which is more than you can accuse our atomic power-stations of, eh?

Though I don’t suppose there’d be much keenness for a demo round the hives. Ban the Bee and that sort of thing. You can be struck by lightning, nipped by adders, do a fry-up of toadstools, swig the weedkiller, spin off the rollercoaster, get beaten up by mods and rockers on the prom, not to 101

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mention everyday drowning and falling off cliffs. It’s happening all season.

Plus tennis elbow, nettlerash, hay fever, poison ivy and midsummer madness.’

Overkill only way to treat his assumption whole world as dangerous as London 1664–5.

‘But surely, Doctor,’ Mr Cowley protested nervously, ‘The lovely sunshine – ’

‘ “The great bronze disc of church-emptying Apollo, hardener of heart and skin.” ’ Arms flung wide, quoting Cyril Connolly, obese man of letters. ‘Sunlight absolutely wrecks the epidermis, though I suppose it can hardly be accused of fossilizing the coronaries.’

‘I’m with you there,’ he said more cheerfully. ‘I always baste the wife with Ambre Solaire, and fold a fruit-gum packet for my nose.’

‘When were you conceived?’

Looked blank. ‘Beg pardon, Doctor?’

‘Some interesting research was done in America ten years ago. You’d imagine summer was Nature’s smiling season for starting babies, wouldn’t you? Dancing round the maypole, plenty of cover in the cornfields, it’s traditional.’ He nodded obediently. ‘But no,’ I corrected him. ‘Love in the winter produces, the following autumn, one-third more offspring with high IQs than summer’s passion fruits. People like Picasso and Mrs Thatcher, as opposed to Mozart and Mr Macmillan.’

‘Perhaps that’s because clever people don’t watch so much telly during the winter nights?’ he suggested (I thought rather brightly).

‘A professor in Dublin said it was the thunderstorms.’

‘I know they turn the milk, Doctor, we always pour ours away just in case, though the man from Unigate says we’re daft.’

‘Thunderstorms cause anxiety in newly pregnant women, which mental state affects the hormones circulating in her blood, which in turn get through to the baby and blunt the cutting-edge of its brain.’

‘A bit far-fetched, isn’t it?’ Mr Cowley complained morosely.

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