A TALE OF FIVE MEDICS

As they prepared to leave School for the last time in July 1955, four classmates made an agreement. John Baird, Bobby Burt, Alistair Philip and David Reid had spent the past two years studying Biology with Mr. Balfour-Paul, Chemistry with Mr. Brian Thompson and Physics with Mr. Arnold Beasley, sitting all three subjects for the Oxford and Cambridge ‘A’ Level exams. Alistair, being the brightest, had also taken Advanced Mathematics under Mr. Humphries, so he sat the extra exam. The Edinburgh University School of Medicine required a minimum of passes in two of these subjects for admission, and all four of us had applied for admission. The exams were over, but the results of course were not available by the term end. Nevertheless, either in tribute to the quality of, and the effort put in by, our teachers, or with the hubris of becoming newly minted Merchistonians, the four agreed that the next time they met it would be outside the main entrance to the Medical School, on the first day of the University term.

October the second, 1955, saw the four mustered as agreed. The exams had gone well and we all had been accepted by the University. As we stood in Teviot Place attempting to find our bearings a somewhat familiar figure from the past hove into view. John Mackay had left School in 1953, being two years older, respected and well regarded but so vastly senior to us in the school hierarchy that we could not have known him well nor would he have known us. He had chosen to perform his two years of National Service in the Royal Air Force before coming up to University to read Medicine, and was now, like us, a freshman. Five from the same School seemed quite impressive until we learned that our near neighbour, George Watson’s, was to be represented in our year by no fewer than eleven former pupils.

For the major lectures and demonstrations the entire Class met together, but for tutorials, laboratory practical classes, anatomy dissection and assorted activities we were divided into smaller groups. The University relied on the safely conventional, segregation technique of alphabetical order, so John Baird and Bobby were frequently thrown together, as were Alistair and David. John Mackay, on the other hand seldom had that pleasure (?) although both the Johns and Alistair were together in one clinic. The four of us performed five terms of anatomy dissection together, but otherwise were only once all assigned to the same group, a paediatric clinic in the winter of 1960, our Final year.

With five of us having been together at School and at University it was perhaps ordained that we would graduate and leave together in 1961 and so it was that five newly qualified physicians were unleashed upon the public in different directions, some to different countries even, and making different career choices. Our first Graduating Class re-union was held in Edinburgh, ten years on, in 1971. Unfortunately, John Mackay, who had settled in Hong Kong, failed to receive notification of this event and John Baird had been sent on an exchange tour with the USAF in California, so neither was able to attend, but the other three came together once more, although by now none of us was still living in Edinburgh. John Baird had joined the Royal Air Force, Bobby had moved to England, John Mackay was living in Hong Kong, Alistair in the USA and only David still in Scotland. Fifteen years later, 1986, brought the five of us together once more in Edinburgh for the twenty five year reunion, and now Alistair and Bobby were in the USA, David was ensconced in British Columbia and the two Johns remained as before. The class of 1961 had become a close knit group which enjoyed getting together and, conscious of the depredations of the passage of time it was thought advisable that further reunions should occur at intervals of five years, in Peebles for 1991 and 1996. All five of us were present on both these occasions, and then David proposed an additional reunion for 1999, which he would arrange, in Whistler, B.C. This was well attended and the five were present and correct at this and again in 2001 at Dunkeld for the fortieth year celebration, back on the regular schedule. After this Alistair arranged an additional reunion in Carmel, California, in 2003. Again well attended, but unfortunately the five were incomplete. John Mackay’s wife, herself a physician, had a professional engagement which precluded their attending, but the proper order was restored in 2006, which saw the five, now all retired from practice, in the Lake District at Kendal for our forty-fifth year celebration. To emphasise his return to the fold John Mackay emphatically won the Men’s golf competition.

With retirement now established it may be of interest to record the closing professional scene of each participant. John Mackay retired as a physician partner in a private practice group in Hong Kong, where he still lives, having climbed the highest mountain of many countries in the world on the pretext that he was researching the effects of oxygen deprivation and altitude! David Reid, after specialising in plastic surgery, was the Senior Surgeon in Princeton Hospital, British Columbia, and where he continues to live. After 25 years in clinical pharmacology Bobby who had been Medical Research Director for two pharmaceutical companies in the USA and involved in the development of some twenty new therapeutic agents, now lives in East Lothian. Alistair, after a career devoted to caring for premature and new-born infants (Neonates), was Professor of Neonatology at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California and now lives north of San Francisco. John Baird spent 37 years in the Royal Air Force, mainly specializing in aviation medicine. He was eventually promoted to the rank of Air Marshal as Surgeon General to the British Armed Forces and retired with a Knighthood. He now lives near Cambridge and remains as fanatically bird watching as he did at school!

On each occasion except the first we have taken a group photograph, but unlike the fortunate Dorian Gray, it is us who seem to age and not the pictures. B-P saw these when he returned to Edinburgh on the occasion of his ninetieth birthday and it was he who suggested that our story might be of interest to The Merchistonian, and encouraged us to write it.

Given the group diaspora it is indeed remarkable that the five of us have managed to come together so regularly, and have remained very close friends despite the infrequent contact. At each reunion, those present have met, with spouses, for a purely Merchistonian dinner, and an outing on a golf course, with differing degrees of success, an acknowledgement of the strength of the friendships and feelings engendered by and for the School. In this context one has to admire the perspicacity of Mr. Gilbert Mair who wrote the words of the School song, and in particular the opening lines of the third verse,

Her sons are scattered far and wide

Beyond the sunset’s glow:

But she holds their hearts with silken cord

Wherever they may go.