The Real James Herriot by Jim Wight Page A

life first became apparent in the lecture rooms. Professor King, who taught biology, was an incredibly old and frail man who conducted his classes with total detachment. Stooping over a sheaf of yellowing notes, he mumbled almost inaudibly down at his desk and whether the students listened or not, was a matter of no concern to him; it was entirely up to them.
    The class took their cue from the considerable number of failed men left over from the last year and stamped and cheered as though they were at a football match. This rowdiness started right at the beginning of the lecture when the roll was being taken. When the name of the only female was being called, there was an uproar of shouts and whistles while the poor girl, who was naturally shy by nature, coloured deep red and sank lower in her seat.
    The other outbursts came at the jokes. Professor King, at the beginning of his teaching career in the later years of the nineteenth century, had decided that his lectures would be racy and full of wit, so he had pencilled in a comical allusion for each lecture. For nearly fifty years, he had not changed a single word of his lecture notes, so that successive generations of students knew exactly which joke was coming and where.
    For instance, when he was discussing the snake Dasipeltis shedding its skin,he would clear his throat, pause and say ‘for Dasipeltis always returns the empties’. This was the signal for more stamping, wild yells and hysterical laughter from the class.
    The only time he ever looked up from his papers was at the end of his lecture when he invariably drew a large watch from his waistcoat pocket, gazed around the students with a smile of childlike sweetness and said, ‘I see by my gold watch and chain that it is time to stop.’ Pandemonium then broke out again.
    Another of the elderly teachers was Professor Hugh Begg who taught parasitology. He was a well-liked man, full of good advice to the students, but he was hard of hearing and so was only dimly aware of the tumult that characterised his lectures. He would raise his head, peer around him and say, ‘Wha’… what’s that noise?’ One would need to be totally deaf not to hear the response from the assembled students. Hugh Begg did, however, have a piece of advice one day that Alf never forgot. He was a wise old man, with many years of experience behind him, and he was talking about the kind of life that awaited the veterinary surgeons of the future. On this occasion he had the ears of the class, and his theme – a vitally important one – was that they would learn by their mistakes.
    ‘Gentlemen,’ he said solemnly, ‘ye’ll never make veterinary surgeons until every last one o’ ye has filled a forty-acre field full o’ carcasses!’ Prophetic words.
    When I talk to some of the young graduates in our practice in Thirsk, hearing of the pressure they were under at University, I cannot help casting my mind back to my father’s stories of his student years. The card games in the common-room, the time spent sitting happily in the cinemas rather than in lessons, and the riotous scenes in the lecture theatres when they did attend, paint a very different picture of veterinary education from that of today. However, despite the rather unorthodox lectures, the material given to the students was sound and, providing they worked and read the text books, they had every chance of qualifying within a reasonable time.
    My father, well aware that the cost of his education was being borne largely by his parents, was determined to do well. He bought the necessary text books such as
Sisson’s Anatomy
and
Animal Husbandry
by Miller and Robertson, and spent many hours studying in the huge Mitchell Library which was near the college. He obviously found theatmosphere in the big library somewhat daunting and wrote in his diary: ‘That place depresses me. You can almost hear the brains throbbing.’
    He was taught Animal Husbandry, Chemistry and Biology in the