Microbes, Music and Me by John Postgate

Author:John Postgate [FRS, John Postgate]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: A life in science
Publisher: Memoirs Publishing
Published: 2015-08-03T00:00:00+00:00

Medical interlude

The duodenal ulcer which had troubled me in the early 1950s had gone, or at least become quiescent. But bouts of excessive anxiety continued to plague me and, in 1957, I was in the thick of one. My brother called my condition the ‘screeching willies’. I looked anxious, I was jumpy; my movements and speech were often tremulous. I was always weary, would palpitate if I had to run for a bus, and I slept badly. I felt rather as if I had a constant hangover from too much alcohol, though in fact I rarely drank at all. I feared crowds: I could have the greatest difficulty in concealing sensations of panic in, for example, a large department store, and on at least a couple of occasions found myself impelled to leave without buying whatever it was I went in for. I dreaded sociability, unless it be with family, or old friends with whom I was wholly at ease; and my ‘normal’ fear of public speaking was intensified. Only my passion for jazz would move me to go somewhere unfamiliar of an evening or weekend, and at jazz clubs I would skulk in the background as best I could. If I got to play, as I steeled myself to do once or twice, I would play badly and hesitantly. However, doctors could find nothing somatically wrong with me.

Fellow sufferers will recognise at once the symptoms of the condition called anxiety neurosis or endogenous depression, depending on how protracted and/or debilitating it is. My current bout was not helped by the domestic stress of adjusting to life with our two daughters, Selina, at two and a half years old a cheerful, healthy infant, and her sister Lucy, aged almost one. I have since learned that identifiable stresses make little difference to one’s situation once dread has started to close in. In the 1950s, diagnoses of neurosis or depression carried overtones of hypochondria, even malingering, among both doctors and their patients. “It’s all in the mind, snap out of it!” said my mother, typifying a widespread attitude. And anyway, even a sympathetic family doctor could do little about the condition. Mine prescribed phenobarbitone, which at least ensured sleep of a kind, plus zombie-like sloth when awake. I could still keep working like a beaver, and I lived from day to day.

How could I face the USA in this condition? My upbringing and sense of duty triumphed: I would load up with phenobarbitone and face it. With Butlin’s approval, for he was delighted with the glory reflected on his group, I entered into negotiations with the DSIR.

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