Taming the Beast

Taming the Beast- Memoirs of a Pioneering Cancer Physician by Prof John F. Smyth.

It is a truism that bears repeating: everybody has a story that is worth telling. Or almost everybody: there must be some lives that never quite reach the bar that is needed to maintain our interest. But they are few, I suspect. They are at one end of the spectrum of memoirs: at the other end, there are biographies and autobiographies with which we engage on page one and remain riveted to for every page that follows, right up to the end. These tell of lives that have been full of interest and incident and may even have changed the world for the better. This memoir by John Smyth is one of those.

What is particularly striking about this account of a life lived through the second half of the last century and into the present day, is the range of the interests that have sustained the author. Prominent amongst these is music, in which he had the great advantage in life of having a choral training. Making music with others is not only a great pleasure for those involved, but stands as a metaphor for the ability to co-operate that we need if we are to achieve anything very much. Those who keep to themselves, who plough a lonely furrow, may get somewhere in life, but they are far less likely to achieve anything than those who are ready to work with others. John Smyth’s musical career brought him into contact with musicians of considerable stature and gave him something that lasted him a lifetime. Which, of course, is what music does: it stays with us, sustains us, makes sense of a world that can at times be testing and confusing. But more than that, music humanises.

And that has an important bearing on the professional career that John pursued and that provides the main pillar of this fascinating book. Those with a sufficiently long memory will recall the time when there was little that medicine could do for those afflicted by cancer. That was the dread disease, spoken of in hushed tones, often concealed from the patient himself or herself. A diagnosis of cancer was, in fairly recent times, a terminal diagnosis. I remember talking to a paediatric oncologist friend who said that at the start of his career his job was a bleak one indeed – there was very little he could do. Then, with the development of a whole range of new drugs, he was suddenly able to offer hope. Now he went in to work each day knowing that there was at last something he could do for the children in his care.

Each of the new drugs in his armamentarium, of course, was the result of a long and complicated process of research. Penicillin may have grown by chance in a petri dish on a lab window, but that is not how these powerful cancer drugs are discovered today. Long years of enquiry, observation, and painstaking testing lie in the hinterland of such medicines, and behind all that work there stand people who have been prepared to devote their lives to the task of conquering disease. Their story can be a fascinating one, combining long periods of hard slog with moments of insight and breakthrough. It is one of the most exciting detective stories there is, with, in so many cases, a happy ending.

In this wonderful account of his life as a pioneering oncologist, we are given the story of a life spent in that important and edifying work. The author is modest throughout, but those writing a foreword need not be so constrained. John Smyth’s contribution to the treatment of cancer has been very significant. This is not the account of a bystander – it is the story of a frontline combatant.

Scottish medicine has had many heroes in the past. This is the story of one of them. But it is also the story of a man who has made music with others, who can fly an aeroplane, who has made many friendships, and to whom there are many who, quite simply, owe their lives. So any foreword to a story of that nature should end, it seems to me, with two words: thank you.

Alexander McCall Smith