I MET David Mendel in 1976 near the end of his highly successful career in cardiology. He told me then he had “done” cardiology, as indeed he had. After a sabbatical at Oxford University, David then became the first person in the U.K. to record the surface potentials of the auditory system, the auditory brainstem response (ABR). Odd for a cardiologist to want to do this perhaps, but David’s lateral thinking led him to this goal, in case he could use it as a model of neural function to test cardiac drugs. It wasn’t useful for this, but it began his second career in auditory neurophysiology, and ensured that we became firm friends, and he my mentor. He learned the technique of ABR from Haim Sohmer in Israel, the first in the world to achieve it. The trick was the need to prepare the skin really well before applying the electrodes; advice ignored by others!
Although David kick-started the ABR in the U.K., soon to be used for measuring hearing impairment in premature and newborn babies, his real contribution to medicine was his great humanity and understanding of what it was like to be ill. As a young doctor, like some of his colleagues, he had spent a year recovering from tuberculosis. He had some truly great and inspiring teachers whose advice is repeated often in this book.
We spent many pleasant hours together in his lab at St. Thomas’s Hospital; at his beautiful cottage in Kent, greatly enhanced by his own skills in joinery; and on conferences abroad mostly concerned with electrophysiology. A constant topic of conversation was the philosophy of medical practice. A constant delight was the presence of his wife, Meg, the ultimate hostess.
It was during a trip to Italy that David became irritated by his inability to speak fluent Italian. During a post-congress tour of the Palladian villas near Venice he decided something had to be done. On retirement he enrolled as an undergraduate at Kent University and attained a very creditable degree in Italian. His command of the language was further refined by frequent visits to Italy. He became a world authority on the works of Primo Levi, whom he greatly admired and who became a personal friend. He did not believe that Levi’s death was a suicide and put up a very good argument to prove his belief. David became a skilled and much sought after broadcaster on the BBC.
I am delighted that this wonderful book, which I helped to persuade him to write, is being published for a second time. Although some of the techniques and treatments described belong to an era now past, the message of how to be a “proper,” humane doctor is more important today than it ever was. The lure of technological advances in medicine and surgery, together with the economic constraints placed on everyone in health care, make it all the more important to remember the patient. If you follow the wisdom in this beautifully written book, you too can become a first-class doctor.
—JONATHAN HAZELL, FRCS