Welcome to The Plague Pit – issue number 32

Mr Harvey White is our most senior contributor to date and a distinguished retired surgeon and oncologist. Born in 1936, he was educated at Winchester College (1949-54) and Magdalen College, Oxford – training in medicine at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, London. Aside from his clinical achievements, he has published several works on the history of medicine. Nearly thirty years ago, he founded the Old Wykehamist Medical Society, which now has more than 300 members around the world.

Harvey’s article below reminds us that there are many kinds of ‘lockdown’ and most of them are unpleasant…

Lockdowns, pandemics and epidemics have been with us through history and identifiably so in my own life – some minor but others of greater significance.

This image above is taken from a Pathe News clip on August 1, 1940 (see link below) and shows me with my older brother arriving as evacuees in Sydney, New South Wales.  I was playing my mouth-organ; presumably in the absence of a piper!  Subsequently we were both in Winchester College (Phil’s house – ’47 and ’49)  – arguably a form of lockdown!

http://www.britishpathe.com/video/a-new-home/query/evacuees

My brother was nobly carrying all our possessions in 2 wicker baskets although, in company with many others on board, he was feeling ill. They were then all taken to an ‘isolation unit’ and found to be suffering from scarlet fever (a Streptococcus pyogenes infection – often fatal in that pre-antibiotic era).  Thankfully, I was rejoined by my brother when he recovered after an enforced period in hospital. Youth was on his side, as has also been noted with COVID-19 today. 

We were both marooned in Sydney, unable to return to England for 5 years until a passage home was found on H.M.T. Athlone Castle towards the end of the war.   We were contained within that ship for 6 weeks en route for Liverpool – followed by an albatross across the Pacific and then picking up American servicemen in the Atlantic who had been torpedoed.

Meanwhile my father, having made a porridge of digestive biscuits and condensed milk on Christmas Day 1941, shot his dog and set off to escape from Hong Kong which had been over-run by the Japanese. He was captured and incarcerated in Sham Shui Po Camp – relying on hidden reserves of character and resolve to overcome malaria, beriberi, malnutrition and boredom.

There was my own isolation with TB when at school, treated in hospital on the new drugs – streptomycin (1943) and isoniazid (1952).     

Many years later, I  was  in prison in Greece, on a trumped up charge engendered by professional medical jealousies.  Thankfully the charge was swiftly thrown out by the High Court in Athens.  I had to come to terms, however,  with having to share a cell with two criminals who didn’t speak English and I was not allowed any outside communication.

A positive experience can come from all such situations of restraint. Life will be different after COVID-19 but there will be technological spin-off and an assessment of new values in social mixing, travel and communication.

Let us all meet the challenges ahead drawing on our lockdown experiences with common-sense, self-reliance and a personal responsibility for our own actions.

Mr Harvey White