55. A Fortunate Woman - Polly Morland
In 1967 the writer John Berger published a book that’s since become acknowledged as a classic, A Fortunate Man, an intimate study of a country doctor, John Sassall (a pseudonym) and his lifelong devotion to his patients in this small rural setting. Just over 30 years later, Polly Morland found a copy of the book as she was clearing the house ready for her mother to go into a care home, and realised that she was living in the very same area where Sassall's practice had been located - not just that, she also knew the female doctor who'd now spent twenty years tending to the community. That gave her the idea for the book, which followed the doctor around for a year - and by chance, coincided with the arrival of the Covid pandemic.
This is a quiet, poetic and beautiful book, interspersed with monochrome photos by Richard Baker, about what doctors do, how best they should do it, and how the traditional model of a 'family doctor' who serves a community for their whole career, knowing their patients intimately as doctor and friend ('caring for the person, rather than the pathology' is how it’s neatly put at one point), can benefit everyone.
On an emotional level, I often found this a difficult read, especially the Covid section dealing with elderly patients - my beloved mother died during that period, though not of Covid, and I often found myself comparing the caring and empathetic doctor of this account with the chaotic, frightening and often incompetent experience that we actually had, and feeling very sad. I’m afraid it feels as though increasingly fragmented and unsatisfactory treatment is more likely to be the future of healthcare. I’d really love to be optimistic that this person-centred model will survive but - it’s not looking likely.