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Dr George Sava - A Surgeon remembers

The letter signed ‘F. Gail' ….began by saying that the writer had recently read one of my books, lent to her by a friend, and at once she had felt in a state of rapport with me. Rather remarkably it went on to describe in some detail how she had seen me seated at my desk; the particulars might have been culled from the book, but I do not think so; or they may have been unconsciously supplied by a mutual friend.   However that might be, their accuracy was somewhat impressive.

And then came the gist of the letter: the writer had been bedridden for some months and an invalid for two years with severe and chronic pains in her abdomen and spine. The specialists she had seen-and there were several- were unanimous in saying that there was no reason for an operation. Nonetheless, she was assured in her own mind and spirit that I could help her, though if I decided otherwise she would know that her case was indeed incurable. Finally she asked for an appointment.

I admit that I was sorely tempted to refuse. In the first place, I felt strongly that if the specialists she had named in her letter had all come to the conclusion that, whatever was wrong, it was not operable, I was not at all likely to find myself in disagreement with them. In the second, the tone of the letter was, in my then ignorance of the writer, far from encouraging. A lady who claimed to have seen me at my desk, though she was living, bedridden - in the depths of the country, did not sound to me like the sort of patient I liked having; she would probably be extremely difficult.

Whether it was curiosity to see this strange writer I do not know, but, after the first inclination to refuse, I had a sudden revulsion of feeling. Now it seemed to me that it was my duty to give her an appointment in the face of my better judgement. Both her time and mine would almost certainly be wasted, but if she was in great suffering and. for whatever reason, had acquired so much faith in me as her letter suggested, the least I could do was to gratify her wish. Accordingly, I dictated a letter naming a day a week ahead, with the secret hope that she might fail to keep the engagement. If she was bedridden, it was difficult to see how she was going to make a journey which I estimated to be all of two hundred and fifty miles: and on reflection she might decide that, after all, it would be hardly worth it merely- to hear me repeat what she had already been told, not once but several times by others.