A King's Physician

(See front cover)

Reasons like the following made Bertrand Lord Dawson of Penn's westward journey across Canada the past fortnight a respectfully observed, newsworthy processional :

He cured King George V of pneumonia's aftermath by having the royal side pierced and drained of accumulated pus, and by enjoining a strict convalescent regime (TIME, April 8, 1929, et ante).

He is the only one, not excepting the King & Queen, who has been able to manage the Prince of Wales in his obstreperous childhood or his willful manhood.

As a privy councillor he helps govern the British Empire.

He is the perfect British doctor.

He was one of the two English lords last week en route to the convention of the British Medical Association at Winnipeg. (Berkeley George Andrew Lord Moynihan of Leeds, surgeon, was the other.)

He talked charmingly and pointedly, until he was hoarse, while traveling across Canada.

His wife and youngest (third) daughter accompanied him on the journey.

Career. Lord Dawson is reputedly the only peer who has succeeded in keeping his age out of the register of the British peerage. This deliberate obscuring of his biography is the only flaw in this otherwise impeccable nobleman. However: he was born March 9, 1864, at Duppas Hill, Croydon, Surrey, England, to Henry Dawson, an architect of sufficient contemporary repute to be elected a fellow of the Royal Institute of Architects. His mother was one Frances Emily Wheeler. Somewhat more than 40 years ago the then Bertrand Dawson was a comparatively poor but comparatively elegant medical student in London. Among his acquaintances was a really poor bookkeeper in London, James Ramsay MacDonald. Recently the Rt. Hon. James Ramsay MacDonald, Prime Minister of Great Britain, told a story about both of them: "The first time I visited Buckingham Palace as a guest of the King, a distinguished looking man, whom I had been informed was Lord Dawson, came and shook my hand in a most familiar fashion, saying, 'Have you forgotten me?' Then he reminded me of a night when we had a frugal supper together in a Bloomsbury restaurant. . . . Our combined wealth was insufficient to save us from walking to Holloway station." With his permanent amazement at his own rise to eminence Mr. MacDonald commented: "Could any of you, with all your capacity to forecast, then have said to both of us, Gentlemen, you will bid each other good night tonight, and it will be your fate not to meet again until invited as guests of His Majesty to partake of his hospitality at Buckingham Palace?" Lord Dawson has never expressed such amazement at his own rise.

Luck, his pleasant appearance and his expertness in diseases of the stomach kept young Mr. Dawson from the bowler hat and satchel of the obscure English doctor. Minnie Ethel Yarrow, youngest daughter of Sir Alfred Fernandez Yarrow, the potent shipbuilder, was a chronic invalid. A doctor was always at her side. One day the regular man suddenly became ill. Dr. Dawson was handy, was summoned. He cured the girl. They fell in love, married (1890).

Miss Yarrow's recovery made Dawson patients of Yarrow friends. The circle grew. Dr. Dawson became fashionable, a "Harley Street" practitioner, although his commodious, beautifully furnished home and office is in nearby Wimpole Street.--

The U. S. has no counterpart of Harley Street. Nearest approximations.are Boston's Back Bay district and Washington's I ("Eye") Street. A Harley Street physician or surgeon always comports himself decorously, properly, ofttimes pompously. He has medical learning plus a general culture. (Lord Dawson knows his literature, from which he often quotes. Matthew Arnold is his favorite poet.) Harley Street patients rarely change their doctors. The doctor is part of the family organization. Harley Street men wear a sort of professional uniform. The present costume (Lord Dawson maintains his meticulously) consists of morning clothes-- black shoes and socks, grey spats, striped trousers, black coat, grey top hat. Thus attired Harley Street makes its calls.

Dr. Dawson's Yarrow circle spread to the British court. King Edward VII had digestive troubles--aftermath of typhoid fever and of his continual gustatory excess. Dr. Dawson, as consultant physician, kept the royal paunch content. He became personal physician (1907) to George V, who then was the Prince of Wales. Upon George's coronation (1910) Dr. Dawson continued with greater prestige as his personal physician. The royal family frequently had great difficulty disciplining their heir, whom they familiarly still call David but whom subjects-apparent call Edward. At such times the King would call on Dr. Dawson to take the youngster in hand. Prince Edward always obeyed the doctor. He still is amenable, having voluntarily appointed Dr. Dawson his personal physician seven years ago. The Prince pays Dr. Dawson -L-500 a year to keep him well, the King the same amount. However, Dr. Dawson received -L-10,000 extra, plus honors for his attendance in the King's last bad illness.

Lord Dawson has this in common with Eve: whereas she was made from Adam's side, he was made a privy councillor by the side-piercing of George V. For 20 years he had been advancing at Court toward privy councillorship -- Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (1911), Companion of the Bath (1916), Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order (1918), Knight Commander of St. Michael and St. George (1919), Knight Commander of the Bath (1926). (He must wear the insignia of those orders at the Winnipeg medical convention.) Professionally he had been "made" long before. It is ten years since his grateful monarch and good friend elevated him to the peerage. He chose the title Lord Dawson of Penn because (it is said) he traces his ancestry to the great William Penn's family.

The Perfect Doctor. Professionally Lord Dawson is famed for his gastroenteric studies and publications. However, his practice is general and he is socially famed for his bedside manner. When he makes a call the patient is usually gently distracted by his appearance: build slight; hair dark, greying at the temples; mustache slightly lighter than the hair; eyes blue, kindly, twinkly; face lined, still dimply at 64. His manner is gentle, understanding, at the same time businesslike and alert. He makes a swift, thorough examination, usually reaches a diagnosis at the bedside. If his patient is a hysterical woman, he assumes a brusqueness which usually is efficacious. He will scold a woman for "thoughtlessly attempting to pour a quart into a pint bottle"--all the time sympathetically and soothingly holding her hand.

A woman's "duty of Motherhood" is one of his stock bedside sermons. He sees "no evidence of physical or moral harm in birth control." Once he remarked publicly: "To ask this generation to go back to the helter-skelter method of having families is like crying for the moon." Another time he declared: "Imagine a young married couple, the parents of one child, who feel that they cannot afford another for three years, being forced to occupy the same room and to abstain for two years. It's preposterous. You might as well put water by the side of a thirsty man and tell him not to drink it." In 1921 he wrote a book which he does not allow publicized, Love, Marriage and Birth Control.

He has three daughters, no heir. Last year came his first grandchild, by his second daughter, Sydney.

Frequently he sends patients to the quiet of St. Moritz, Switzerland. He occasionally spends his own vacation there.

Travel Talk. He reached Montreal last fortnight. By the time he reached Winnipeg he was hoarse from speeches and interviews. Being casually interviewed bothered him. It was a new experience. He feared he might be misquoted. At Winnipeg he secluded himself with Lady Dawson and their daughter the Hon. Rosemary Dawson (the ladies are slim, friendly) to prepare himself for arduous convention days--donning and removing his academic robes, presiding over the medical section of the convention, delivering a clinical introduction to that section, receiving the honorary doctorate of laws of the University of Manitoba from the University's Chancellor, the Most Rev. Samuel Pritchard Matheson, Archbishop of Rupert's Land and Primate of all Canada.

At Montreal he made his longest talk of the fortnight. It was a prepared discourse on "Alcohol, its power to do and undo." Nub: "I put it to you that because alcohol is used in excess by some, it should be abandoned by all is unsound reasoning. The general application of the argument would lead us to negation and gloom. Because some love well rather than wisely, are we to cease our worship of Venus? Because speech sometimes maddens us, are we to ordain silence?"*

* A Wimpole Street neighbor is Sir E. Fanjuhar Buzzard, neurologist who served the King in his illness. He too went to the Winnipeg Convention.

* Identical in sentiment was the statement of Dr. Eugene Lyman Fisk, director of hygiene of Life Extension Institute as he sailed from Manhattan last week: "Man has three outlets: intoxication, love and work. The chief American outlet is work. Through love man may gain leisure. It is a good check of both intoxication and work. It's not a bad idea to mix the three about even.''

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