Martin Eastwood, A Mull GP
GP locum work in Mull early 1960s
Martin Eastwood MB, MSc, FRCPEd
(and Jenny Eastwood MB, FRCPsych)
After completing my house jobs in the Royal Infirmary, Edinburgh in 1961, I felt I needed more scientific training in order to become a clinical academic.
Jenny and I were married as medical students, and by this time, more than four years married, Jenny was pregnant with our second baby. We had embarked on post graduate training in Biochemistry in Edinburgh. Money was short. At one point the manager of our bank said that though the bank couldn’t increase our overdraft, that he personally would lend us £10.
Our practicing clinical experience limited to house jobs, we decided, with our 18-month-old daughter, to combine our summer holiday with a GP locum in Salen on the island of Mull.
We arrived by Macbrayne’s ferry at Craignure harbour. Our old Ford 8 was lifted from the ferry onto the island, in a large net.
Dr Flora Macdonald, the GP was a wonderful doctor. Each year she spent part of her holiday attending a Post Graduate course for GPs, in Edinburgh. Dr Flora stayed overnight to catch the morning ferry on the following day.
She had stated her views about child rearing, “If they will no’ obey you at the knee, they will no’ obey you at the shoulder”. So, our first night in Mull was nerve wracking.
As locum GP we were initially greeted somewhat warily. A bit unnerving until we learned that the previous year’s locum had been judged to be truly awful, personally and professionally.
Dr Flora’s house was of dark grey stone and the interior was dark. It was in the middle of the small village of Salen where Dr Flora’s daughter and her husband owned the village shop.
The housekeeper, Mary was effective, friendly and wise as was the District Nurse who described Jenny as “very stylish, I mean very English oh ….”
We could only answer in the negative to the frequent question “Do you have the Gaelic?”.
Mull was an agricultural community, largely small sheep farms which sometimes kept a cow which supplied the family with milk.
The major town was Tobermory, not part of the practice. We served the communities on most of the rest of the eastern part of the island. There were a few, minimally used, often single-track roads with passing places. There was one petrol station in our area.
We delighted in everything about our life on Mull. That we could not access classical music on BBC Radio 3 contributed to our decision not to make our lives there.
At regular intervals all around the coast were beautiful beaches, ideal for children. However, there were only primary schools on the Island. Secondary schooling necessitated travel to Oban by ferry. The children stayed in hostels or with relatives, attended school during the week and returned home only for weekends and holidays.
Doctor Flora was deeply loved and respected. She was local, skilled, kind, and empathic. Her husband had been the GP prior to his death.
Her grey stone house was on the ‘main’ road mid-way between Tomermory and the Craignure ferry, close to the ‘centre’ of Salen village.
From the front door, one entered a hall with the surgery waiting room and Consulting room immediately accessible.
In the consulting room, alongside the desk was ‘The Pharmacy’. On the shelves were bottles labelled and placed in groups according to conditions:
For ‘the heart’, ‘the lungs,’, antibiotics, etc.
This was my first experience of direct clinical care, with only my own judgement to be called upon. Though Jenny was equally competent, I undertook the role of family doctor and Jenny the GP’s wife, a significant role!
However, when a pregnant woman went into labour roles changed. On her departure, Dr Flora said that there were no deliveries imminent but were there to be a delivery, the midwife was first class. However the inevitable phone call, came, “I am in labour”. So, I called the midwife, but obtained no reply. So, we contacted MacBraynes. The huge ferry boat made a special trip up the Sound of Mull to transport the woman in labour to the hospital. Rather spectacular.
Most of the patient surgery visits were easily encompassed, enjoyable contacts, as doctor and dispenser of medication.
During the first morning surgery, there came a mumbled telephone call, was it English, was it Gaelic? Soon after, there arrived a couthy farmer, Lachie (Lachlan), with a virtually severed thumb. My house job in surgery was in the Professorial Unit of Michael Woodruff. There, the big event had been the first UK kidney transplant with none of the day-to-day, useful training of a district hospital placement. I found a surgical needle and catgut stitching materials. We filled and heated the steriliser. I did know how to scrub up and administer local anaesthetic. During the repair, I reattached the bits of the thumb as best I could.
The farmer patient, Lachie, was a star. Jenny fortified us with tea at regular intervals.
The job was completed and dressed. The patient was provided with penicillin, for a week and off he went to the Perth sheep sales. A week later the repair was reviewed and again later. A clean repair.
Many years later, visiting Lachie, now bedridden with Parkinson’s disease, he greeted us by raising his somewhat fixed thumb, which had been retained in a position, good enough to hold a shepherds’ crook.
House visits took up the whole of at least two days each week. We, including the District Nurse, piled into the small Ford car and off we went. There was a standard pattern to the visits to isolated crofts.
On arrival, an effusive welcome. “You’ll be wanting your tea”, and lovely cakes and cups of tea appeared. Later the patient was reviewed, then on to the next remote farm where the process was repeated. A very (full)filling experience.
Night calls were infrequent. Coming back home from one of those few night calls at dawn, on a lonely stretch of road, a stag leapt over a fence onto the road. He wheeled round, confronted the car and prepared to charge. After a while the stag snorted and continued on its way.
One day the local policeman came with the butchered half carcass of a stag. He asked to store it in Dr Flora’s deep freeze. The next day the same policeman lead the hunt for the poacher.
I told one patient that we would love to see an eagle. We were told to be at a particular point on a road, cross over the moorland to a cliff and there below was a nesting eagle. It rose majestically from the nest and soared away over the sea, provoked by a flock of smaller birds.
We went back several times as GP locum. Later we rented a cottage in the north of Mull and fell totally in love with the entirety of the wonderful island and the people.
But for the schooling issues, who knows, it could have become our home.
