A treasured gift from uncle to niece
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Tattered with the sewn-together-leaves coming apart between blue covers, the handwriting in a blue-ink pen is still legible – “To Premini, with compliments from Uncle Dick”, dated 11.7.54 in Colombo.
This was the copy of ‘Essentials of Surgery’ lying on a shelf for more than 60 years in the home of respected Consultant Radiologist a Dr. Premini Amerasinghe which was handed over to Dr. Lakshman Karalliedde.
“Whilst leafing through the pages of my copy, there was an anticipatory enthusiastic glint in Lakshman’s eyes — a eureka moment…,” she recalls, adding that the rest is history.
It is Dr. Amerasinghe who gives the audience a glimpse into Dr. Spittel’s life. The eldest of a large family in which her own mother was the youngest, with a wide difference in ages, Dr. Spittel was educated in Colombo at Royal College followed by Medical College. But his younger siblings accompanied their parents from station to station. “I remember my mother relating that when their father, a provincial surgeon, was transferred from Anuradhapura to Jaffna, they travelled by bullock cart, which took three days.”
Her mother was educated at Chundukuli Girls’ School, Jaffna and the brother closest to her, Noel, at St. John’s College. Noel would be the first Obstetrics and Gynaecology Specialist and Head of Castle Street Maternity Hospital.
Dr. Amerasinghe herself goes down memory lane: “When I was young, a visit to ‘Wycherly’, Uncle Dick’s home in Colombo, was surrounded by an aura of excitement and anticipation. Amongst the treasures were a veddah’s bow and arrow and a stuffed Devil Bird. This particular visit was in the 1950s, just before I entered university. We had a pre-med year then and I think the purpose of this visit was to give him this news. We went up the stairs to his den, the library. My uncle was relaxing in a cane chair. He was alone, as his wife who was bed-ridden after a stroke had died a few months earlier and his daughter Christine wasn’t around. The highpoint of the visit was his presenting me with an autographed copy of ‘Essentials of Surgery’.
“I made good use of this book as a medical student, it is written concisely, with clarity. His excellent account of infection and inflammation cannot be surpassed. This reprint would have gladdened my uncle’s heart, for on one occasion he asked my husband Mark (the well-known Orthopaedic Surgeon) whether it was possible for him to edit it.”
And so, ‘Essentials of Surgery’ is reborn in 2017.