Doctors and Dilemmas

New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 666, 10 April 1952, Page 10

Doctors and Dilemmas

HE Doctor as the angel of humanity is a modern invention. On the radio for a long time we listened to the homilies of Dr. Mac., now it is Doctors Gillespie and Kildare over 3ZB who indulge the weakness of the flesh . « or is it mind? The exploits of these two very rough diamonds make me alternately laugh and snort. On the one hand the caricaturing of people within and beyond the hospital is really humorous, but the ease with which these two smooth out the most formidable problems is too much of a strain on credulity, In the last episode I heard, a man, having been frustrated by his wife up to the point where he developed an ulcer, was egged on by our heroes to reverse the role. In one minute the erstwhile shrewish social climber looks up at her cave man full of love and devotion. "Well" . . . as Costa would say. However, Gillespie himself outsnorts me, and despite an ingrained cynicism about the altruism of mankind in general and doctors in particular I am a Kildare fan. The People’s Voices FTER listening to several of the BBC Heritage of Britain series over 3YC I felt that I had got most enjoymenrtt from "The Briton at Leisure." I could not help being astonished at the air of spontaneity which characterised a programme we were later assured was written; the bursts of enthusiasm, the interruptions, so much part of a lively discussion, were so well incorporated, The voice of the chief narrator, neither cultured British voice nor one which jarred through obvious faults, clearly set the feature among the people. In much that was so good-one man scoffing at another’s perverse idea of leisure, the authentic voice of the innkeeper, the ‘Tacy description of cyclists-it was disappointing that the brief selections from Welsh singers should have been so well — known, and that in the second there was an accompaniment. It is the unaccomerr

panied Welsh singing which is so deeply moving. However, when one considers a title like "The Briton at. Leisure" one cannot but admire the art through which something that could have been merely a statistical survey is filled out with richness and diversity of meaning.

Westcliff