Walter Esson

The forthcoming Reunion provides the third of a trio of memorable occasions, the other two being our Golden Wedding and the University College Gaudy at Oxford for another collection of aging contemporaries in 2010.
Reflecting on the period since 1961 one tends to conclude the near impossibility of forecasting the shape of one’s future career at its outset.
1962 would mark the beginning of a long association with Scotland, not in itself only predetermined by a powerful personal Scottish inheritance but a welcome feature in practice. Initially built around the essential basic post registration jobs in Edinburgh (neonatal and general paediatrics plus obstetrics) it was later to be developed professionally and academically as I specialised Occupational Medicine.
In this, the Royal Navy would play the dominant role .The foundation was laid in early 1964 in a three month gap between hospital jobs and an appointment to a Survey Ship in the Indian Ocean in the midst of a set of uprisings and revolution in the then Tanganyika and Zanzibar. Happily a challenging start was to be rounded off with awesome exploratory experiences along the Kenya Coast and southern Seychelles and completed by spending Easter in the classic colonial Lutyens type Government House in Port Victoria. This was at a time long before luxury cruises and the area was relatively little known with island communities scarcely changed from the descriptions of Conrad and Somerset Maugham.
A Traineeship in Occupational Medicine at ICI in Manchester (1964-66) along with continuing involvement in the Royal Naval Reserve seemed to point to an obvious conclusion that if one wanted to pursue the specialisation, the Royal Dockyards provided a salubrious milieu and the prospect of encountering virtually any known trade or calling. And this is where my horizon might have remained had not a brief nuclear submarine refit in 1967 drawn my attention to the many technological and medical issues associated with long term submergence and isolation, challengingly, at that time, subject to substantial conjecture
The next sixteen years were thus set to see a progression in seniority as an Underwater and Submarine Medicine Specialist through to accreditation as Consultant in 1979, occasionally interrupted by a break to do the DPH at Glasgow and a spell as Principal Medical Officer to the Royal Dockyard at Rosyth with a role in the development of diving medical standards in the new North Sea Oil world. . I think much of the time with submarines could be described euphemistically as “hands on”, necessarily requiring some prolonged underwater trips of several months duration. Being an “extra” on these occasions meant one became a connoisseur of the various forms of bunking in amongst the slender free space between the torpedoes and certainly confirmed a freedom from claustrophobia.
Albeit with comparatively few routine medical excitements the work throughout this period was both challenging and rewarding. The situation was unique and if ever previously explored, had only been done to a minimal level. Selection, which had exercised many with concerns over sensory deprivation, proved an admirably simple process largely dependent on tolerance of the “Free Ascent” in the Submarine Escape Tower at Gosport! As to those “medical excitements”, an environment in which it was seldom possible to refer a case to the conventional backup channels or in which transfer from a rolling Submarine Fin to a Helicopter in the somewhat lumpy maritime conditions of the Atlantic was severely constraining, taught admirable professional restraint. Adventurous surgical exploits in an environment where the working space was both confined and gaseous anaesthetics were unacceptable were not to be encouraged. Splenectomy when out of reach of all reasonable aid to the east of Labrador is not something to be undertaken lightly by the amateur surgeon even when the Navy has provided a remarkably catholic set of instruments.
The Submarine and Underwater path had eventually to come to an end so that after a final spell at Faslane on the Clyde as Squadron Medical Officer/Principal Medical Office and Consultant in Charge of the new Occupational Health Unit, the period from 1984 until my final retirement in 2000 as a Civilian Consultant to the MOD (N) was marked by a return to more conventional Occupational Medicine within the Navy. Nevertheless even this was not quite what it seemed in that history dictated the acquisition of substantial additional expertise across the fields of Health and Safety, Communicable Disease Control, Environmental Health and eventually Environmental Protection, with a commitment to monitor and improve performance over a broad spread of MOD (N) departments involving the creation of what would be a substantial department to do the job. Our involvement as a lead authority in this eclectic mix was rewarding. Most of our clients valued our input. Some, dare one suggest, notably in the conventional clinical world, found it more difficult to accept the new disciplines while others in the shape of our Royal Marine commitments, experienced an element of understandable schizophrenia when reconciling essentially civilian notions with an ethos geared to the battlefield. Both needless to say, called for endless tact, sympathetic understanding and above all flexibility.
Amidst this, Medicine was not neglected thanks to an interesting specialist clinical role within the MOD (N) structure as a delegated Civil Service Medical Assessor, elaborated in my last five years, as the issues of Disability Assessment began to come to the fore and receive overdue constructive attention.
Paradoxically, while the Navy is traditionally seen as a pathway to worldwide travel, our experience has been narrow. Certainly we have lived in virtually every quarter of the United Kingdom before finally coming to rest here on the edge of Dartmoor in 1988 and come to know Scotland so well that one family member is now a permanent resident. Retirement has encouraged remedial itchy feet and so building on the experience of a memorable safari and cruise taking in Tanzania and the Seychelles, some thirty odd years after my first acquaintance in 1964, plans are now afoot to head for the Far East and Australia in the early New Year stimulated by a change in the employment focus of our daughter and her family towards that region..
The year 2011 is particularly significant not only in that it marks 50 years since qualification but 51 years of marriage and another association with Guys in that while I completed my clinical training there 1958-61, Elizabeth, (then known as Elizabeth Storrs Fox and actually a nurse and midwife (UCH)), took a sabbatical working as Medical Secretary to the Eckhoff and Glover Firm. She will have common ground with several of those due to attend the reunion.
In the intervening period she has shown remarkable tolerance and support despite the vagaries and often very trying mobility, imposed by a service life. She notes philosophically that apart from allowing for her to qualify as a specialist in cardiac nursing, the travels have provided her with an instructive cumulative experience of nursing practice in various hospitals throughout the UK. On completion of her Nursing Career she demonstrated unequivocally, that one form of retirement should not encourage idleness by launching and operating a very successful national and international business over most of the last twenty years.
With strong personal family associations to well known Guys names from 19th /early 20th century and the recent emergence of a Guys forbear who would appear to have anticipated Semmelweis in the 1840’s, Elizabeth is looking particularly forward to renewing her acquaintance with a cherished establishment. She also notes her pleasure in being reminded of Guys during a recent visit to the Edinburgh Royal Colleges in order to flesh out the details of a sequence of her 18th and 19th century College Scottish forbear worthies (all of whom seemed to have had a fascination for being Royal Archers) by coming across the Presidential Portrait of Paddy Boulter.