‘What’s the pass mark?’

‘45%.’

‘What did you get?’

‘46%.’

‘You’ve been working too hard!’

Another of his friends used a different approach in following this rather risky attitude to study. He was being examined in Anatomy and was presented with a large bone. ‘What is this?’ asked the examiner.

‘A femur,’ replied the student.

‘Correct,’ continued the examiner, ‘a femur of what species? Is it the femur of a cow or a horse?’

‘It’s all right,’ said the student dismissively, ‘you can forget that one. I’m not looking for honours!’

During that first year, Alf’s teachers seemed quite pleased with him. His chemistry teacher, Professor Duncan, wrote in his report: ‘Is quite a fair average, not likely to be brilliant but I expect him to be steady.’

In his next year, 1934–5, he started to slip back. He failed his Physiology and Histology examinations, together with Animal Husbandry. Very poor marks of 36%, 25% and 37% respectively were attained and his teachers were not pleased. Remarks such as ‘not in attendance’ and ‘does not work; very poor’ are evident in his report.

This is rather surprising. Alf was a responsible and ambitious young man. He wanted to get out into the world, earn his living, and cease to be a burden upon his parents. In addition, he was not one of the band of students who played cards in the common-room all day with the intention of extending their carefree college life well beyond the allotted five years. After a few sessions round the card table in his first year when he lost heavily, the appeal of that enjoyable but expensive pastime died very quickly. In his report of Autumn Term 1935, Dr Whitehouse wrote that he was ‘not in attendance’ for his Anatomy classes. This seems strange behaviour for a well-adjusted young man. While Alf was never a brilliant student, carrying off little in the way of distinctions during his time at the college, this does not fully explain his poor showing.

There was, however, a serious reason. In his last year at Hillhead School, he had experienced severe pain in his rectum that developed into a discharging anal fistula. He recovered from the initial attack but this debilitating condition, which resurfaced in his second year at the college, would be one that would dog him intermittently for the rest of his life. He was so ill in the summer of 1937 that he was admitted to hospital where he underwent a minor operation to clean up the affected area. It was a failure and he was back in the Western Infirmary in 1939 for another attempt at resolving this persistent complaint but, as before, it was not successful.

This acutely painful affliction, inevitably, affected his ability to concentrate fully on his studies. Without the help of antibiotics in those days, it was not only the pain of the condition that weakened him, he had to endure bouts of severe septicaemia brought about by multiple fulminating abscesses. The only treatment was to go to bed, often with a raging temperature, and bathe the area with hot water in an attempt to keep the infection under control.

Alf was very philosophical about this blot on his otherwise good state of health and always managed to put a humorous slant into any discussions about it. ‘I may not be an expert on many things,’ he was to say years later, ‘but I consider myself to be an authority on the subject of “Arsology!” ’ He spoke from bitter experience, going on to say, ‘I’ve had several operations on the old posterior, all of them agony, but I’ve had enough! No one else is going to have a go at remodelling my backside. This lot is going into the “box” with me!’

By the summer of 1936 at the end of his third year, he had passed his Physiology and Histology exams, but failed yet again in Animal Husbandry. He sat that examination for the fourth time in the December of that year. This time, he received a little help. One of the assistant lecturers in the department was Alex (Sandy) Thompson – a man who also taught me twenty-six years later. He was a pipe smoker who, during the examination, was seated behind the examiner, in full view of Alf, contentedly puffing on his pipe.

‘How many orifices are there in the teat of a cow?’ the examiner asked.

Alf hesitated, then noticed that one forefinger, accompanied by a puff of blue smoke, was pointing into the air behind the examiner’s back.

‘One,’ he replied.

‘Correct. How many in the teat of a mare?’

Two smoke-enshrouded fingers appeared, still caressing the pipe.

‘Two,’ Alf responded. The rest was easy.

In 1937, Alf did much better and in July, he passed his Anatomy, Pharmacology and Hygiene exams although his marks were modest; he achieved 45% in Anatomy, which was just enough.

Anatomy was taught by the principal himself, Dr Whitehouse. Alf found the subject interesting but, at the same time, it was a hard, grinding slog. With so many facts to assimilate, he felt at times that his brain was reaching saturation point. The students had to learn the detailed structure of several different domestic animals and the subject was not only hard work, it could also be very boring. Alf enjoyed Dr Whitehouse’s practical sessions in the anatomy labs where the students worked in groups dissecting an assortment of dead animals, mainly horses and cows, but the Anatomy lectures were a different proposition. These were much quieter than the riotous sessions under the elderly teachers. Instead of the wild shrieks and paper missiles that characterised Professor Begg’s lectures, a different sound predominated – the rhythmic and contented drone of sleeping students.

This was understandable. Dr Whitehouse worked from the huge tome called Sisson’s Anatomy, the forbidding contents of which every student was expected to assimilate. The following extract is typical: ‘The great sciatic nerve ( N. ischiadicus) … is derived chiefly from the sixth lumbar and the first sacral roots of the lumbo-sacral plexus, but usually has a fifth lumbar root and may receive a fasciculus from the second sacral nerve. It turns downward in the hollow between the trochanter major and the tuber ischii over the gemellus, the tendon of the obturator internus, and the quadratus femoris. In its descent in the thigh it lies between the biceps femoris laterally and the adductor, semimembranosus, and semitendinosus medially, and is continued between the two heads of the gastrocnemius as the tibial nerve. Its chief branches are as follows …’ There is little wonder that in the face of such a bombardment, the students’ minds either wandered on to subjects of greater interest or, more commonly, just descended into insensibility.

In the Autumn term of 1937, at the beginning of his fifth year, Alf progressed to Pathology, Medicine and Surgery. With his failures in several subjects necessitating re-sits, he had fallen behind and was resigned to the prospect of taking more than the statutory five years to complete the course. He was not too downhearted. Not only were many of his friends in a similar position but, having reached a stage of his education where he felt that he was entering the nuts and bolts of his future career, he was more determined than ever to do well. Pathology, the study of disease: this was what it was all about. Pathology was a subject that both fascinated and frightened him, and at this stage of his education, a man entered his life who would remain vividly in his memory until the day he died. A man who would figure in his dreams for years to come – someone he told us about so many times that I almost felt I, too, had sat next to my father, quivering in the supercharged atmosphere of his Pathology lectures. A man by the name of Professor J. W. Emslie.

I am not one who is prone to nightmares. Once settled beneath the sheets, I spend, in general, a pleasant several hours in another world. I dream vividly and my dreams are usually a pleasant variation on my life’s activities. I do, however, suffer a recurring and disturbing dream. The orchestrator of these unnerving experiences is a nameless and shapeless individual who persistently informs me that I am not a qualified veterinary surgeon at all. I do not know this person but I have grown to dislike him intensely over the years. ‘You haven’t passed your Physics and Chemistry and you’ll have to take them again!’ he repeatedly tells me. I shrug this off, asserting that I shall re-take the exams and pass them without any problem, but he has his doubts – and so do I. As the dream progresses, I do nothing about swotting for the exams until finally I face the prospect of cramming the whole of the Chemistry and Physics syllabus into one day. At this point, to my intense relief, I wake up.