At the very first lecture I attended in medical school in Caracas, a time when Venezuela's future was so promising, oil a plenty, iron, aluminium and gold mines, snow-capped mountains and flat-topped tepuys with rare fauna and flora for tourists to marvel over, endless llanos filled with cattle and wild horses, tropical beaches, energy-filled rivers, the highest waterfall in the world, exciting, throbbing cities, music and senoritas, the professor of medicine, Dr Benaim Pinto, a Sephardic Jew, spoke to us about nominative determinism. I actually just found out what this sweet, gentle man was talking about when he said that there is a theory that people try to live up to their name, whether it is their proper name or a nickname. He seemed to believe it and at that time who was I to judge him?
Officially, nominative determinism is the theory that a person's name can have a significant role in determining key aspects of their job, profession and even character. Or, to make it more believable, it is the idea that people tend to gravitate towards areas of work that fit their name.
The theory is not a new one. In 1952 the great Swiss analytical psychologist Carl Jung had noted "the sometimes quite gross coincidence between a man's name and his peculiarities or profession."
Medicine with its many specialties is especially attractive to the idea of nominative determinism. Open any medical specialty register and you will easily find examples, a dermatologist called Rash, a rheumatologist named Knee, and psychiatrists named Couch and Looney.
One of the most famous in medical circles appeared in the British Journal of Urology in 1976. It occurred in an article titled, The Urethral Syndrome: Experience with the Richardson Urethrolplasty. It was written by two urologists, D Weedon and JW Splatt, a joke which many of my friends will appreciate on their nightly visits to the toilet. Dr Flood comes to mind here as well as Drs Fountain and Spray.
Then there is Dr Barth Toothman. Dr Toothman graduated from dental school in 1981 and joined his father and brother in the well known Toothman Dental practice in Ohio, as an odontologist. Really, what else could he have done?
Lord Brain was the author of a classic textbook, Diseases of the Nervous System, first published in 1933. He was born Walter Russell Brain in 1895, was a conscientious objector during World War 1, became a Quaker in 1933, was part of the team that attended to the old racist Winston Churchill on his deathbed and was created Baron Brain in 1962 before his death in 1966.
He married Stella Langdon Down, the granddaughter of Dr. Langdon Down, another racist who gave his name to Down syndrome or as they preferred to call it in the UK in those days, "Mongolism" because these children reminded them of oriental peoples who were considered "inferior." So "Down syndrome" is not meant to describe those with the condition as being "down" or delayed or inferior, as many believe, but is simply taken from the first person who described the condition, Dr Down. Would that his surname had been Kind or Hope. It would have saved many people much sadness and despair.
Interestingly Stella Brain's younger brother was born with Down syndrome and as was the custom in those days and until recently here in T&T, promptly hidden away from society in the family-run institution for the mentally retarded, Normansfield, founded by his grandfather, the eminent Dr Down.
Then there is the appropriately named Dr Cockshut, another Victorian doctor. RW Cockshut is famous for an article he wrote in the British Medical Journal in 1935 where he called for all male children to be circumcised to reduce masturbation. To quote "I suggest that all male children should be circumcised. This is 'against nature,' but that is exactly the reason why it should be done. Nature intends that the adolescent male shall copulate as often and as promiscuously as possible, (take that with a grain of salt, eh) and to that end covers the sensitive glans so that it shall be ever ready to receive stimuli. Civilization, on the contrary, requires chastity (that's a bag of salt now), and the glans of the circumcised rapidly assumes a leathery texture less sensitive than skin. Thus the adolescent has his attention drawn to his penis much less often. I am convinced that masturbation is much less common in the circumcised. With these considerations in view it does not seem apt to argue that God knows best how to make little boys."
This unknown but goodly gentleman, to the delight of generations of Catholic priests, is the source of the idea that masturbation is the source of many of the evils of modern society. He evidently believed that less masturbation equals a more civil society. A classical example of Blaise Pascal's dictum that, "People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive."
Of course, this being Trinidad, we also have our little curiosities. Various names spring to mind but shyness prevents me from calling them out. I shall restrict my comments to personal observation. So what could be better than a children's doctor named Bratt and who has written a book titled, The Book of Brats or Bringing Up Children in the Caribbean. Like Dr Toothman, what other medical specialty could I have practised? Only psychiatry.