The pages of this faction novel recount the experiences of four medical students in their long and taxing progress from Pre-Medical to the Finals. It is, as already said, a combination of fact and fiction, and the incidents and anecdotes described are either derived from my own experiences and recollections or from those of other contemporary students at the time - around the middle of the last century. No doubt, these narratives, or something rather similar to them, were also common knowledge to many other medicos during that period; and medical students being what they are - and the medical course being what it is - they are rather a breed apart due to the extensive and varied curriculum covering such a long period of time.Their story is told by one of their friends who reminiscences about about their experiences after his young son told him he'd like to be a doctor when he grew up:
'Desmond's tentative decision to be a doctor when he grew up set him thinking about his own experiences as a medical student. The course hadn't been an easy one. He had been frank with is son and hadn't intended his comments to act merely as deterrents; and outside the academic sphere , heart breaks hadn't been few. Still, the long years of study and training had been interesting ones, and in many ways, rewarding. The raw material of the embryo physician had to be composed of resistant stuff to endure the manifold processes connected with his manufacture; and the searching examinations of six years permitted few flawed articles to emerge from the medical furnace.He smiled as a whimsical proposition crossed his mind. What with all the obstacles and uncertainties which lie strewn in the medical undergraduate's path, how had he ever managed to qualify? His reminiscences were to provide an answer to that question.'
The medical curriculum described in the book is more or less chronological order:;Pre-Medical year; Anatomy School; Pathology and Bacteriology Courses; Hospital Clinics; Hygiene, Therapeutics, Public Health and Medical Jurisprudence Courses, Hospital Residency; Maternity Course, and then the Finals.
'Desmond's tentative decision to be a doctor when he grew up set him thinking about his own experiences as a medical student. The course hadn't been an easy one. He had been frank with is son and hadn't intended his comments to act merely as deterrents; and outside the academic sphere , heart breaks hadn't been few. Still, the long years of study and training had been interesting ones, and in many ways, rewarding. The raw material of the embryo physician had to be composed of resistant stuff to endure the manifold processes connected with his manufacture; and the searching examinations of six years permitted few flawed articles to emerge from the medical furnace.He smiled as a whimsical proposition crossed his mind. What with all the obstacles and uncertainties which lie strewn in the medical undergraduate's path, how had he ever managed to qualify? His reminiscences were to provide an answer to that question.'
The medical curriculum described in the book is more or less chronological order:;Pre-Medical year; Anatomy School; Pathology and Bacteriology Courses; Hospital Clinics; Hygiene, Therapeutics, Public Health and Medical Jurisprudence Courses, Hospital Residency; Maternity Course, and then the Finals.
