Dr. Deva-Aditiya – Consultant Eye Surgeon During our student days we had to do two weeks of ’eye appointment’ at the eye hospital. Dr. Deva-Aditya was one of the eye surgeons and some of us were allocated to him to do the ‘eye appointment”. Dr. Deva-Aditya was close to retirement and was a raconteur of note. These are two of his tales.
1. A policeman had come to an Eye Surgeon with a condition which necessitated removal of the affected eye-ball. A mistake had occurred in the operating theatre and the wrong eye-ball was removed. The surgeon had felt remorse to say the least. He had offered to pay a ‘handsome’ compensation to the patient. The patient had accepted this amount without signing any documents on the pretext of not embarrassing the surgeon. Once the full payment had been made, he had filed a court case and won another substantial amount as damages, legally, for this grave mistake. The message which Dr. Deva-Aditya gave us was ‘never trust a policeman’.
2. Just opposite the Kynsey Road entrance to the General Hospital Colombo, is a clock tower commemorating the memory of Dr. Koch, who was a past principal of the then Medical College. He belonged to a long-gone era and is not to be confused with our beloved Professor Koch of Physiology. This clock tower was called Koch’s clock tower from early days. Next to the clock tower, according to Dr. Deva-Aditiya there was in those days a common room for the Medical students. In this common room, hung a huge portrait of the departed Dr. Koch, looking down on the activities of the medical students playing cards, carrom and billiards, with an enigmatic smile. One day, said Dr. Deva-Aditya, the powers that be decided to white-wash the walls of the common room. All the photographs, hanging on the walls were taken down. The last photograph to be taken down with reverence was the huge photograph of Dr. Koch. There was a large audience to witness and help in bringing down this photograph. When the photograph was taken down, lo and behold, a large collection of used condoms fell to the floor in a heap, under the place where the photograph was hanging. It became apparent that generations of medical students, had not only been playing billiards in the common room. The condoms after use had found an immediate safe and undetectable receptacle, behind the photograph of the enigmatic smile of Dr. Koch.
