From the book jacket:
Over his many years of practice he collected folk sayings, aphorisms, and anecdotes – hurriedly jotted down while they were still fresh, and lovingly shared with the reader in this book.
Copyright (c) 1977 by Douglas D. Vance, M.D.
And now, some of his collected humour…[read while listening to this or this]
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A certain young lady was a teacher at a local girls’ college. She was unmarried, the scholarly type who was devoted to teaching and unschooled in the devious ways of the world, as many of her contemporaries were. It was her first visit to me and the purpose of the call was to seek relief from a painful hemorrhoidal condition.
The nurse had positioned her on the examining table, and I was endeavoring to avoid any unnecessary pain, which, of course, is not always possible. Naturally, this was a first in her life’s experience, and she felt constrained to say something. Invariably, everyone in a like situation would consider the possibility of a catastrophic illness, possibly a malignancy. She thought for a long time how she should ask it, and then she blurted out, “Doctor, is my end in sight?”
Now, how should I have answered that? In my diabolical mind only one thought surfaced. “Yes, Miss Derriere, your end has been in sight for about ten minutes!”
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Another lady was passing middle age and was suffering from the glandular deficiency characteristic of her age group. Some of her friends had been to their physicians and received “shots” which they claimed had produced a new interest in life and lifted the veil of hot flashes and tears. Nothing would do but my patient should come in requesting “one of them harmonica shots.”
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You could rewrite the dictionary by substituting the words that Bob uses. For instance, if you need a new electrical receptacle, he will get a “recepsule.” If you have a plastic object, to him it is “plaskit.” If it is perpendicular to you, it is “perfectdicular” to Bob. With all the atmospheric contamination these days, he said, “You know they ought to do something about this here air ‘complution’.”
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A highly respected housewife had had several children and had led a normal, comfortable existence until she developed some middle-aged gynecological discomforts. It was hard to get her to discuss freely what was the prime reason for the consultation. Finally, she came forward with the brave statement, “I’ve been having trouble lately with some of my virginal organs.”
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This young lady with a meager knowledge of the English language, and with her unlimited personally accepted words and phrases, had an appointment with me for a “thoroughal” examination. On the date agreed upon she called in to cancel the examination, stating that she was “demonstrating” and would like to postpone it.
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A fellow lived in what would correspond to the ghetto area of one of our larger cities. He had had a protracted illness and convalescence from pneumonia accompanied by a harassing, rib-shattering, intractable cough. My medications had not seemed to accomplish the desired effect, so he concocted his own antitussive formula which he described to me, “I mixes paregoric with spiritual ‘monia, and it helps a lot.”
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This woman, when quite young, had an attack of rheumatic fever. It is frequently prevalent in children, and is known to recur at times. Since the antibiotics came into use, it is not such a devastating disease as it was, and fewer cases of rheumatic heart result. This lady was having a recurrence and, after visiting her physician, she said, “The doctor told me I have ‘romantic’ fever.”
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Call it inflation, recession, or depression, a lot of my friends were thrown out of work in 1974. Mr. Garland was a happy-go-lucky old fellow. Time did not mean anything to him. He would say, “There’s just so much time, and I’ve got all of it.” I asked him what he was doing since he was laid off, and he told me he was “working for Pat Turner.” I told him I didn’t know that man. Smilingly, he told me, “I’m patting sidewalks and turning corners.”
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We had a registered nurse in charge of the infirmary at the male college in our city. She was the most fastidious, precise, and devoted person I ever saw. I had directed her to give one of the boys a laxative. When she called the next day, I asked her if the young man had any results from his medication. She replied, “Yes, doctor, he has had results, and results, and repeated results.”
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It has been said that one is never too old to learn. I had been in practice over forty-five years before a young lady told me her mother had had a “stroke of the bowels.” We always think of a stroke as being paralysis following a rupture of an artery in the brain. The same type of paralysis may follow infarction of a cerebral artery due to blockage by arteriosclerosis or atherosclerosis, or a blood clot. Further study into the cause of the lady’s case proved that she did have a “stroke of the bowels” due to blockage of one of the main arteries to her bowel (mesenteric thrombosis). This resulted in gangrene of that segment necessitating removal of several feet of the lifeless bowel.
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“I’ve got a chronical bronichal trouble and pain betwixt my shoulders. I’ve also got the authoritis or some kind of ‘ritis and Dr. Harris told me my jaw bones was drawed.” It would be hard to picture anyone more sorely afflicted – not even poor old Job.
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A good many years ago, Mrs. Wood, a resident in our town, was vying with her neighbors in the reproduction relay. One this morning, she had produced another bouncing baby. One of our older physicians, Dr. Nat Dulaney, noted for his ready wit, when told that Mrs. Wood had a new baby, very quickly replied, “Well, the Woods is full of them.”
In like manner, this lady had the rabbit habit. It had become an annual ritual with her. Shortly after the arrival of her fifth offspring, she developed a pelvic infection necessitating surgery. I went by to see her on the second post-operative day and she announced, “Well, there won’t be any more now, as Dr. Blank removed my tubes and one overly.”
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As the economic squeeze tightened on the family budget, one lady realized that the annual addition of an extra mouth to feed was making it increasingly difficult to allow the necessities for her family. At last she sought relief, surgical relief. She told me that “I had my tubs tied to prevent having more children. The doctor said my ovals were all right.”
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A woman was about sixty years of age when this visit occurred. Her neatly kept apartment was well furnished and spotlessly clean. I noticed several men’s pictures on her dresser and my interest attracted her attention immediately. She beamed as she explained, “That’s Joe in the gray suit and red tie. He’s a professor at the University.” Then she proudly told me about the other two sons, who had been college educated, and who had risen to executive positions in their respective corporations. I soon found out that she had acquired these three sons without benefit of matrimony. She told me frankly about her early life and regarded me with the intricacies of singlehandedly raising three husky boys. The struggling mother, however, was more fortunate than most, financially speaking, as she told me, “Their fathers are some of the finest men in Knoxville.”
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This venerable old matriarch, a member of a pioneer area family, was known for her voluminous vocabulary, and even her dramatizations of every event would have given her an Emmy or Oscar award by present-day standards. She was a gas-afflicted individual. On one occasion, she told me, “Everything I eat or drink turns to water with wind and violence.”
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There is a disagreement among pediatricians about the existence of intestinal worms. Some of the city-raised and trained physicians doubt it. Those of us who have seen them know better. Many years ago a woman from a remote mountain region came to our hospital for an operation. While getting over her ether anaesthesia, a long roundworm (about five inches) had come up into her stomach, crawled or “wormed” its way through the esophagus, and crawled out of her nose. I saw this happen.
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On another occasion, a patient undergoing an appendectomy was found to have a ruptured appendix, and a medium-sized ascaris (roundworm) was crawling out through the rent in the gangrenous appendix.
A similar incident was related to me when an old rural gentleman told me, “I seen a old woman oncet who’d sit and them big long stummick worms’d come up in her th’oat and she’d spit ’em up in the far.”
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One lady was hospitalized with abdominal swelling, pain, and a yellowish discoloration of her eyes and skin. She was a known alcoholic and her diagnosis was obvious. She told me that her doctor told her she had “ferocious of the liver.”
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Frequently a member of the fair sex will come in wanting relief from some ailment, yet she is hesitant in letting you know what is troubling her. Her approach is evasive and she talks about the weather and other unrelated things. One woman was nervously twitching her hands, squirming in her chair, when she admitted, “I’m having trouble with my secrets.”
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On a casual drop-in visit to my office one day, this lady complained of a kidney upset, frequency, burning, dysuria. “If I had thought of it, I would have brought you an experiment of my urine,” she said.
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Backaches. This patient came hobbling into my office and announced, “The choiropracter told me one of my vertebrains was out of place and my phosphate gland might be bad too.”
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For nineteen and one-half years I served as plant physician for a large industrial air-to-air missile manufacturer, which later was converted to making computers. I was one of my responsibilities to examine all applicants for employment. In looking over the preemployment physical examination forms I have run across some rare spelling in answer to the question regarding previous surgery:
1. Appendictis
2. Apinsides
3. Pendix
4. Pinnix
5. Appindictomy
6. Appendestimy
7. Appinsides
8. Appendicts
9. Appendicitious
Can you think of any others?
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There seems to be a never-ending chain of unique answers that patients provide. When I asked the next lady how she was getting along, she said, “I was feeling better, but I got over it.” When I inquired of another, “How are you feeling?” she answered, “I ain’t.”
This dejected dame, apparently at her wit’s end, was the picture of desolation and despair. It is hard sometimes to avoid the trite inquiry, “How do you feel today?” but I was guilty of it, and she replied, “My feel bad hurts all over.” Another indolent-appearing lady volunteered, “I’m so do-less, I ain’t fitten’ fer nothin’.”
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Tom was a man of uncertain parentage. Once he told me me was one-third white, three-fourths Indian, one-half Negro, and two-thirds “old issue.” Tom had never seen the inside of a school. He told me once that the snows were “straddle deep” when he was a young man, and very often “shoe mouth deep.” He worked in my garden once and, while cultivating my collard greens, he said, “Them colleges are ready to eat.”
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This anxious widow had a son in the U.S. Army in a Texas camp during World War II. She told me, “I tried to write him a letter today, but I couldn’t consecrate.” “He’s on penuvers [maneuvers] down in Texas.”
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A mother proudly told me one day that her son “has done gone to college to get more learnin’ and he is working on his ‘Bachelors of Sinus’ degree.”
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It is customary at this small nearby, rural church to have a “pounding” when a new minister takes over the pastorate. To those of you who may not understand this custom, may I explain that each church member brings a pound, usually more, of food to fill the minister’s pantry. One of the ladies brought in a huge basket of freshly picked salad greens, including spinach, kale, collards, turnip tops, etc. She proudly stated, “You needn’t be afraid to cook it right now. It’s done been warshed and looked.”
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Aunt Gertie had passed her ninetieth birthday but her mind was still sharp. Once she told me that if they would put her bedpan where they kept her drinking water, and the water where they kept her bedpan, then she would have a warm pan to sit on and cold water to drink. One member of her family told me, “She’s too feeble in the body to be as peart in her mind as she is.”
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AND FINALLY…
An unpaved rocky road meandered down through the southwestern Virginia valley leading into our town when venturesome persons first traveled by auto about 1908. In these parts, about the only available supply of gasoline was at a primitive country store on the old Abingdon Road. The tank was situated high above the front porch of the store, and the gasoline had to be pumped by hand up into a large, cylindrical, ten-gallon glass receptacle. It would then flow by gravity into the purchaser’s car tank.
There were several empty nail kegs conveniently placed on the store porch where the men sat as they swapped yarns, whittled their cedar wood, spreading shavings all over the floor, and tried to see who could spit tobacco juice the farthest.
A car from “up north” containing several ladies drove in one day to get gasoline and seeking other accommodations now found at every modern service station, but not this one.
One of the ladies very timidly inquired, “Do you have a rest room here?”
One of the natives very innocently replied, “No, ma’am, we just set and rest on these here barrels.”
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Note from my father at the back of the book:
Around 1960 or 1961, Dr. Vance performed surgery on my right ankle to remove a piece of grenade shrapnel that an army doctor could not.
Dr. Vance’s remark, after a considerably lengthy procedure resulting in removing the shrapnel, was, “I thought I was going to be embarrassed, too.” (as the army doctor had been when unsuccessful a few years before)
Richard L. Hill
Which reminds me of the story my father told about a restaurant, The Tennessean, on the “Strip” (Cumberland Avenue) when he was an undergraduate student at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. The proprietor would lock the restaurant doors around 11 p.m. and serve “unstirred milkshakes” (beer) to underaged student patrons.
treetrunkdings 