Sign-In
Cart
Many Changeful Years
Hardcover
ISBN13: 9781413492996
Publisher: Xlibris Us
Published: Jun 14 2005
Pages: 540
Weight: 1.80
Height: 1.38 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.50
Language: English
Many Changeful Years might well have the subtitle The Moulding of a Surgeon for it tells of the early life of a man who became one of the first dozen or so microsurgeons to reattach amputated limbs (as outlined in the prologue, the story of an injured infant).
Throughout the main theme, the author interjects, as a counterpoint, tales and commentaries from his later life as an established surgeon, dealing with unique patients and colleagues, the working life of an emergency surgeon, errors and their causes, nursing practice, the adverse impact of managed care, changes in discipline and surgery in the less developed world.
The formative times that are the theme of the tale gave little hint of where Lister was going, for he grew up in a working class family in wartime Britain, a family that for several years lived in one room, often in straitened circumstance.
The memoir describes a Britain long since gone, a Britain still wedded to ancient measures and currency, confident of its Empire and its preeminence, but whose inhabitants suffered blackouts, night bombing raids, smoke screens, gas masks, and austere rationing not only of food but of clothing and household wares. And it was a Britain whose menfolk, such as the author s father, were absent, often not to return. If they did return it was as strangers, many bitter about the cards life had dealt them.
Many Changeful Years follows the author through these war years, examines life in the back streets of Glasgow, describes the pursuits of the times, carries him through school and on to an ancient University, supplementing the family budget throughout by working delivery trucks, cleaning guesthouses, cutting grass, delivering the Royal Mail, chicken farming, laying sewage pipe, serving as a hospital porter, a bus conductor and a mortuary attendant.
The British National Health Service is a daring innovation, appealing to the author, then both a nationalist and a socialist. Glasgow Royal Infirmary, where Joseph Lister developed antiseptic surgery, has a 200-year history; its casualty department is the busiest in Europe; in it physicians learn of the ways of gangland, managing wounds inflicted by chains, razors and sharpened metal combs.The nursing staff of the 1950s, which has a proud legacy, rigidly controls the open wards. Obstetric training requires that the undergraduate perform deliveries; the author goes to a working class London hospital where he learns much from the mothers and midwives. Prejudice is strong in Glasgow society, similar to that in Northern Ireland. He works as a substitute doctor in the back streets of Glasgow and around Britain.
Five years in the Royal Navy commence with basic training; instructors attempt to create leaders of men from physicians, dentists and pastors. The author joins a frigate bound for the West Indies; officers and training exercises are described. Damage control at sea demands a strategy for tending multiple casualties The frigate was designed for 120 but carries over 200. The author's report shows that it is unfit for habitation with conditions worse than those prescribed in the Poor Houses Act of 1887. The frigate acts as guard ship at the talks between Macmillan and Kennedy in the Bahamas in December 1962; the author remarks in his journal on the lapses in the President's security. Riots break out in British Guiana; the frigate assists. During the Cuban missile crisis the vessel encounters the U.S. blockade.
Studies at the Royal College of Surgeons of England follow. At the Naval Hospital he serves under a surgeon who first used antibiotics in the military on HMS Hood in 1938. The author treats the Admiral who saved the British Far Eastern fleet from a fate similar to Pearl Harbor. The author goes to the island of Mauritius for three years; there are multiple ethnic groups in one of the highest population densities in the world. The Navy occupies a re
1 different editions
Also available
Also in
Biographies General
Bluesland: Portraits of Thirteen Major American Blues Masters
Pete Welding (ED.)
Toby Byron (ED.)
Hardcover
Karl Popper - The Formative Years, 1902 1945: Politics and Philosophy in Interwar Vienna
Hacohen, Malachi Haim
Hardcover
Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man
Trump, Mary L.
Hardcover
The Children of Athena: Greek Intellectuals in the Age of Rome: 150 Bc0-400 AD
Freeman, Charles
Hardcover
Make It a Double: From Wretched to Wondrous: Tales of One Woman's Lifelong Discovery of Whisky
Sackier, Shelley
Hardcover
The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race
Isaacson, Walter
Hardcover
Agents of Chaos: Thomas King Forçade, High Times, and the Paranoid End of the 1970s
Howe, Sean
Hardcover
An Enemy Such as This: Larry Casuse and the Fight for Native Liberation in One Family on Two Continents Over Three Centuries
Correia, David
Hardcover
Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World
Cooper, Christian
Hardcover
Florence Kelley and the Nation's Work: The Rise of Womens Political Culture, 1830-1900
Sklar, Kathryn Kish
Paperback
The Secret Life of the Savoy: Glamour and Intrigue at the World's Most Famous Hotel
Williams, Olivia
Paperback
The Devil's Diary: Alfred Rosenberg and the Stolen Secrets of the Third Reich
Kinney, David
Wittman, Robert K.
Paperback
The Badger: The Life of Bernard Hinault and the Legacy of French Cycling
Fotheringham, William
Paperback
Living with a Wild God: A Nonbeliever's Search for the Truth about Everything
Ehrenreich, Barbara
Paperback
The Butcher, the Embezzler, and the Fall Guy: A Family Memoir of Scandal and Greed in the Meat Industry
Cherington, Gretchen
Paperback
My Own Devices: True Stories from the Road on Music, Science, and Senseless Love
Dessa Wander
Hardcover
How to Be Okay When Nothing Is Okay: Tips and Tricks That Kept Me Alive, Happy, and Creative in Spite of Myself
Lawson, Jenny
Hardcover
Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice
Giuffre, Virginia Roberts
Hardcover
A Walk in the Park: The True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon
Fedarko, Kevin
Paperback
Catch the Devil: A True Story of Murder, Deception, and Injustice on the Gulf Coast
Colloff, Pamela
Hardcover
Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young: A Fugitive Family in the Revolutionary Underground
Dohrn, Zayd Ayers
Hardcover