Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Desert Island Discs
Presented by Kirsty Young
Allergy specialist who introduced the pollen count and revolutionised hay fever and asthma treatment, known as the grandfather of allergy.
Eight records
Little Brother Dance With Me (from Hänsel und Gretel)
Jennifer Larmore, Rebecca Evans, Philharmonia Orchestra, Sir Charles Mackerras
This is going to Gleinborn. I've only twice been to Gleinborn, but to me it means something, and this particular bit of music I think you're going to play now was particularly appealing.
Bridal Chorus (from Lohengrin)
This is because my mother was playing the organ and my twin brother and myself had to provide the air for it. And so it's the first bit of music at the age of seven that I ever really listened to and enjoyed.
Three Little Maids from School (from The Mikado)
When I was at school. We were all boarders and there were no girls. And every winter we did one of the Gilbert and Sullivans. I was a treble and I always enjoyed any of the Gilbert and Sullivans that we did.
Choir of St Paul's Cathedral, Christopher Dearnley (organ), John Scott (conductor)
Every now and again I go to St. Paul's Cathedral and listen to Evensong there. … I thought Japanese, girl, and at the end of it, when it was all finished, I said to her, You were at the service, weren't you? What takes you there? And she said, I have to interpret from English to Japanese from three o'clock in the morning, most mornings, to Tokyo. And she said it's very stressful occupation and she said, I get so stressed. She said, I come to evensong at Saint Paul's.
Queen's College, Oxford. They have various gaudies. … there was a story that goes back a very long time, where a student at Queen's had gone to study Aristotle in Greek in the forest just outside Oxford, and he was attacked by a boar, and he threw his Greek book down its throat, and his life was saved, and the boar, of course, died. And they've celebrated this particular episode ever since, with this gaudy special dinner with Carols. I happen to be an honorary fellow, so I get an invitation to all these gaudies and they're very enjoyable to go to.
This is a personal interest in someone who I remember being born. I knew her father quite well, in fact we did papers together at Guy's Hospital and here, not even thirty years later, she is appearing singing in opera and it was marvelous to hear her singing a major part.
Fantasy in C major, Op. 17 (first movement)Favourite
I am happen to be a Draper and Sir Nicholas Jackson. For the last twenty years he runs these marvellous concerts in the evening at Draper's Hall, and he likes to encourage young people. … the last concert, for instance, there was a girl playing and just looking at her hands to see what they can do. That she can play for over twenty minutes without any music is another thing that intrigues me very, very much.
Nimrod (from Enigma Variations)
Band of Her Majesty's Welsh Guards
I love listening to bands playing. Not only do they play music, but they march when they play. … they'll play this bit of music and it can be very sorrowful and very moving and it makes you realize. All my friends, they lose their lives and I've been lucky and I haven't. But I think it's worthwhile looking back and I think the music that the band plays, it makes you again think you're lucky.
The keepsakes
The book
Axel Munthe
I read when I was about fifteen or sixteen the story of Son Michele by Axel Munter. Every single chapter is almost a book in itself, and it it's very medical and it and it's f it's fascinating.
The luxury
[I think] a pair of binoculars. So I could look at birds and possibly the ship that's going to rescue me, I don't know.
In conversation
Presenter asks
In layman's terms, what most excites you about what's being done in the area of allergy research and work right now?
Well, in things of course inevitably have changed terrifically since I started working in the allergic field, particularly genes. Now there's a terrific amount of work being done on genes. I happen to be an identical twin. And you'd think that I have the same genes. No, we're all different. I myself have had seasonal hay fever for about ninety years before I've grown out of it. I've had acute anaphylaxis and so on. But my identical twin brother and if you'd seen him when we were both eighty, you couldn't possibly distinguish us. The great thing that did distinguish us was that I form allergic antibodies and get symptoms, and he never did. Why this is, we don't know. There are so many factors we now look at. … What does the mother eat during pregnancy? That may be important. Breastfeeding, non breastfeeding. What do you come across in the first few months of your life? This certainly is very important. Do you live with cats and dogs, and do you get immune to them? It looks as though you probably do. There are so many factors, but we don't really know.
Presenter asks
The recording
Timestamps play the recording from that turn
Presenter
Hello, I'm Kirsty Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Discs from BBC Radio 4. For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.
Presenter
For more information about the programme, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.
Presenter
My castaway this week is the allergy specialist Dr. Bill Frankland. Known as the grandfather of allergy, it's not just his significant contribution to medicine that's worth celebrating, but also the mind-boggling length of his life and career. Born in 1912, the year Titanic sunk, he was a clinical assistant to Alexander Fleming. He introduced the pollen count to everyday life, and his wide-ranging research has revolutionised the treatment for hay fever and asthma sufferers.
Presenter
He was nearly a hundred years old, when he was called as an expert witness in a court case involving a careless driver, a wasp sting, and a smartphone.
Presenter
Brought up in Cumbria, his childhood was happy and privileged, and he went on to study medicine at Oxford, and then came what he describes as three and a half years of hell.
Presenter
As a prisoner of war at the hands of the Japanese.
Presenter
The starvation and relentless cruelty he suffered left him close to death. On one occasion his life was, literally, saved by the toss of a coin.
Presenter
His memories of those wartime years were so searing they remained unspoken for decades. We don't have time to list all the awards and the plaudits he's received. Suffice to say his standing is such that St. Mary's Allergy Unit in Paddington in London is named after him.
Presenter
and that he continues to publish academic articles, travel the world, and occasionally even see patients. He says People ask me how I've reached one hundred and three. I say
Presenter
I've been so near to death so many times, but I've always just missed. That's why I'm still alive. So we welcome you, Dr. Bill Franklin. It is very nice to be talking to you today. I I know that you've been practising since the 1940s, and I know you keep up to date with all the current research, and you yourself are very much still engaged in your specialism.
Presenter
In layman's terms, what most excites you about what's being done in the area of allergy research and work right now?
Dr Bill Frankland
Yeah.
Dr Bill Frankland
Well, in things of course inevitably have changed terrifically since I started working in the allergic field, particularly genes. Now there's a terrific amount of work being done on genes. I happen to be
Dr Bill Frankland
An identical twin.
Dr Bill Frankland
And you'd think that I have the same genes. No, we're all different. I myself have had seasonal hay fever for about ninety years before I've grown out of it. I've had acute anaphylaxis and so on. But my identical twin brother and if you'd seen him when we were both eighty, you couldn't possibly distinguish us. The great thing that did distinguish us was that I form allergic antibodies and get symptoms, and he never did. Why this is, we don't know. There are so many factors we now look at.
Speaker 2
No.
Dr Bill Frankland
What does the mother eat during pregnancy? That may be important. Breastfeeding, non breastfeeding. What do you come across in the first few months of your life? This certainly is very important. Do you live with cats and dogs, and do you get immune to them? It looks as though you probably do. There are so many factors, but we don't really know.
Presenter
So
Dr Bill Frankland
Yeah.
Presenter
Let me ask you, is it true that in the nineteen seventies
Presenter
You had a patient that went by the name of Saddam Hussein?
Dr Bill Frankland
Yes, it is indeed.
Presenter
Yes, it is indeed. Tell me a little about that.
Dr Bill Frankland
Well, I always remember it was very exciting to go to the palace in Baghdad, and of course at that time I and most other people hadn't heard of Saddam Hussein.
Dr Bill Frankland
And it took about twenty minutes to
Dr Bill Frankland
To see the great man. And I said, Why are we taking so much time? And he said, Well, so many of his predecessors have tended to be shot, so we have to be very they are very, very careful. Anyhow, if he wasn't sleeping, praying, or eating, he was smoking. He was smoking at least forty cigarettes or more a a day, and this is what is causing his chest trouble.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Dr Bill Frankland
He didn't have asthma and he certainly wasn't fungal spore sensitive.
Dr Bill Frankland
I thought because he was so addicted he wouldn't give it up.
Dr Bill Frankland
And he said, I when are you coming to see me again? And I said, I don't think you're going to stop smoking, and therefore I have no intention of coming to see you again. And um and I think if I know more about him, uh perhaps I wouldn't have used those words. But strangely, the following morning when I was waiting for my plane, a little man came up to me and said, Someone you're interested in has done what you want him to do.
Presenter
Come on, you
Dr Bill Frankland
When are you going to come and see him again?
Presenter
Yeah
Dr Bill Frankland
Yeah. Yeah.
Presenter
Uh
Dr Bill Frankland
I'd given up
Presenter
Smoking
Dr Bill Frankland
Yeah. Stop smoking here.
Presenter
That day that I saw him. We're going to we're going to have to go to the music, Dr. Bill Franklin. Tell me why you've chosen this.
Dr Bill Frankland
Yeah.
Dr Bill Frankland
This is going to Gleinborn. I've only twice been to Gleinborn, but to me it means something, and this particular bit of music I think you're going to play now was particularly appealing.
Speaker 4
Take my hand and fans with me. One foot in, one foot out. Hold your hand and turn about.
Speaker 4
I'm a sorry sight which is left and which is right. Show me once more how it goes, then I might as fight a troll!
Speaker 4
Make your punch.
Speaker 4
You have not to twelve.
Speaker 4
The boy gets down to spoil, maybe he's not such a fool.
Presenter
That was part of Little Brother Dance With Me from Engelbert Humperdink's Hansel and Gretel sung by Jennifer Lamour and Rebecca Evans with the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Sir Charles McKerris. So, Dr. Bill Franklin, you were born then, as we know, in 1912. You were the youngest of four, and as you mentioned, you were an identical twin. Your brother Jack was born just a few moments before you. You were brought up in the Lake District, and you've described your childhood as Victorian.
Presenter
It's a big
Dr Bill Frankland
To begin with, we were in the nursery. I was looked after by a nanny, and she organized your life. There were other staff we weren't ever allowed, for instance, in the kitchen, and we loved to go to see the chef. And we were in a very isolated place near Lake Ellswater, and we didn't see people there at all.
Dr Bill Frankland
Uh I don't think I was lonely as such,'cause I always had my brother uh to to play with.
Presenter
I didn't think
Presenter
Play with uh given that you were three pounds and one ounce when you were born, and given that this was nineteen twelve.
Presenter
You must have been lucky to survive.
Dr Bill Frankland
In retrospect, yes, and I suspect, but I never found out.
Presenter
Yes.
Dr Bill Frankland
I wasn't breastfed. Um I was very premature. Came the wrong way round and perhaps this is one of the first occasions when I was lucky to escape death. The sh
Speaker 4
Yeah.
Dr Bill Frankland
Yeah.
Speaker 4
Uh
Presenter
Your father had fought in the First World War. What sort of man was your father?
Dr Bill Frankland
I admired him and liked him very much. I always looked up to him. My father was very poor, as my mother had made had been left a great deal of money. In fact, in her early twenties, because she had a very good singing voice, she actually spent one year in Switzerland s studying singing.
Dr Bill Frankland
Um my father was at O uh at Oxford, at Boredom College and he'd got a classical scholarship there. But uh he I had this idea that it would be me that would be going to Oxford and I was lucky that I
Presenter
I went there. So you won a scholarship, much uh like your father, to Oxford. You were going to read medicine, however, not classics. Um what was it about being a doctor that attracted you?
Dr Bill Frankland
People
Dr Bill Frankland
Interests me.
Dr Bill Frankland
I didn't have much contact except with my twin brother.
Dr Bill Frankland
And here was the opportunity of meeting lots of people.
Dr Bill Frankland
There's another reason
Speaker 2
There's another reason.
Dr Bill Frankland
This
Dr Bill Frankland
My sister, my brother, and myself all had bovine tuberculosis, and a doctor came from Penrith to see us.
Dr Bill Frankland
But he just kept us in bed
Dr Bill Frankland
He'd no idea what was wrong with us, but we had a fever, and I didn't like this doctor, and I thought
Dr Bill Frankland
Why should this silly old man that that I thought he was um be a doctor? He doesn't know how to deal with children. And I thought, if I am a doctor, I would know how to deal with them as people.
Presenter
Do you know?
Presenter
Yeah.
Dr Bill Frankland
Yeah.
Presenter
Let's go to your second piece of music, then, Dr. Bill Franklin. Tell me why you've chosen this.
Presenter
Yeah. Yeah.
Dr Bill Frankland
Yeah.
Presenter
Uh
Dr Bill Frankland
This is because my mother was playing the organ and and my twin brother and myself had to provide the air for it. And so it's the first bit of music at the age of seven that I ever really listened to and enjoyed.
Presenter
That was Wagner's bridal chorus from Lowen Green, played at Holy Trinity Church there, Paddington, with Frederick Bako on organ. So then, Dr. Bill Franklin, you were working as a junior doctor in the 1930s, and of course this would be before the founding of the NHS, and you were enrolled as what was then known as a civil medical practitioner, and you went to Tidworth Military Hospital in Wiltshire.
Speaker 4
Hmm.
Presenter
You were still a relatively junior doctor, but but very suddenly there you found yourself with something of an onerous position. Explain to me what happened. All the sort of qualified and experienced doctors were suddenly required elsewhere, is that right?
Dr Bill Frankland
That's that's great.
Presenter
Great.
Dr Bill Frankland
Went on the 1st of September, and war was declared on the 3rd of September 1939. And on that day, all the regulars left, and I was left with, believe it or not, 120 beds and the isolation hospital. I was working 16 hours a day, and they didn't give me any additional help for the first six months. It was amazing.
Dr Bill Frankland
Because I saw some very interesting
Speaker 2
They in
Dr Bill Frankland
High-up people in the army, but as a civilian, I could deal with them as I wanted to. For instance, I remember one officer.
Speaker 2
For instance,
Dr Bill Frankland
having his annual medical and he said, The doctor always signs this form to say that I'm fit and I said, You've been abroad, I know nothing about you, I'm going to fully examine you, and you'll have to make a special appointment. So this was something new. And I I enjoyed my time there. Did you quite enjoy The power
Dr Bill Frankland
The power.
Presenter
Yes, for being able to say that to somebody who's rather top brass in the military.
Dr Bill Frankland
Oh yes, yes, uh I I did enjoy it. There were all sorts of things that uh even medically I mean, it was a terrific outbreak of men who enjoyed it. I had to treat them all.
Presenter
Right, let's go to your third piece of music then, Dr. Bill Franklin. Tell me about this. When I was at school.
Dr Bill Frankland
I was at school. We were all boarders and um there were no girls.
Dr Bill Frankland
And every winter we we did one of the Gilbert and Sullivans. I was a treble and uh I always enjoyed any of the Gilbert and Sullivans that we did.
Speaker 4
Three little maids from school are we, part of schoolgirl world can be, filled to the brim with girlish glee. Three little maids from school, everything is a source of fun.
Dr Bill Frankland
I scream free from
Speaker 4
Nobody's safe, nobody cared for mom
Speaker 4
Life is a joke that's just begun.
Speaker 4
Three little date for school.
Speaker 4
Ladies and men who wall and wary, come from the ladies semi-mary, faithful genius to learn
Speaker 4
Green little maids from school, green little maids from school.
Speaker 4
One little maid is a bride yum yum, two little maids in attendance come Three little maids is the total sum Three little maids from school
Speaker 4
From three little maids take one away, Two little maids remain and they won't have to wait very long, they say. Three little maids from school, Three little maids from school.
Presenter
Three Little Maids from School from Gilbert and Sullivan's Mikado, sung by Elsie Morrison, Margery Thomas, and Jeannette Sinclair, with the Glounbourne Festival Chorus and the Proarte Orchestra conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent. So then, Doctor Bill Frankland, it was nineteen forty one. You were a captain by then, and you had completed
Presenter
Well, just a two-day course in tropical medicine training prior to being sent to Singapore. I think it took you and your thirty-odd colleagues two months to get there. And this was the moment. I said in the introduction today that there was a moment
Presenter
When it literally was the toss of a coin that saved your life. Can you explain to me how that happened?
Dr Bill Frankland
On the troop ship there were thirty five doctors, and when we arrived in Singapore
Dr Bill Frankland
I and this other doctor
Dr Bill Frankland
Went to an Indian field hospital, I think it was, and when we'd been there for three days, uh an officer came along and said there are two hospitals, one is at Tanglin, and it's largely dermatology and some V D, and the other is the main h hospital, military hospital. The job there will be an estis. We both wanted to go to Tanglin. So this officer got a coin out and he said to me, Franklin, call.
Dr Bill Frankland
I said heads, and it was head.
Dr Bill Frankland
And therefore all was well. And I went to Tanglin. The other doctor went to the main military hospital. And when the Japanese came over, they murdered everyone in the operating theatre, including the patient who was unconscious. So this was one of the occasions where literally a spin of a coin saved my life.
Speaker 2
The mm.
Presenter
Yeah.
Dr Bill Frankland
Yeah.
Presenter
So it had been two months later, indeed after you arrived, February the 15th, 1942, that the Japanese had invaded Singapore.
Presenter
You ended up a prisoner of war of the Japanese. Um the brutality and the the starvation that you endure
Presenter
Your fellow prisoners suffered is now very well documented.
Presenter
Not just as a prisoner, but also as a medic in that set of appalling circumstances as a prisoner of war, how much were you able to help at the time?
Dr Bill Frankland
To begin with, um the first year of the war, um
Dr Bill Frankland
Uh you you could do a great deal of help, but we we ran out of uh uh material. In fact, one tablet of anti-malarial tablet was worth a a month's officers' pay and so on. Uh we were all starving. We all had salvation berry berry with malaria, dengue and all these ill illnesses. So w we were a very
Dr Bill Frankland
Sick lot of people with very, very little to treat whatever illness you had. Lots of people who tried to escape just before the fall of Singapore got malaria and died of the malaria and and and nothing else.
Speaker 2
With
Dr Bill Frankland
And the most annoying thing was that in the last two and a half years, w when I was, as it were, on my own, looking after about two hundred people in a work camp on this Blackemati, it was called in those days now, Sentoza. Sentosa means Paradise Island. Blackemati is was Hell Island, you see. But if my sick parade got too big, too large,
Dr Bill Frankland
What would happen? A Japanese non-medical private would come in, he would say.
Dr Bill Frankland
If the patient could stand up and didn't faint, the Japanese would say out to work the following day. And because they were so severe and I knew this would happen, I had to be myself really severe and put people out to work,'cause they were uh they wanted people to to work for them and that was that and they didn't really mind how ill ill they were.
Presenter
Um, for many, many years, as I understand it, you never talked about your experiences.
Speaker 4
Ooh.
Presenter
Why was that and what was it that caused you to change your mind and and talk about them in more recent times? When I go
Dr Bill Frankland
When I go
Presenter
B
Dr Bill Frankland
I thought
Dr Bill Frankland
Well, I I'm alive, and this is marvelous. Um and I got back in November, forty-five, and I decided I'm going to forget everything that I've gone through.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Dr Bill Frankland
I want to forget everything.
Dr Bill Frankland
And I will not speak about it and
Dr Bill Frankland
To my wife and and when the children were born, I never spoke at all about what my experiences were like as a prisoner of war. I just to me, starting in the beginning of nineteen forty six, I actually started working again at St Mary's Hospital. I wanted to learn about penicillin, which I had never heard of, and all sorts of things. I was starting, as it were, a new life.
Speaker 2
I was sorting
Dr Bill Frankland
And I wasn't I didn't want to
Dr Bill Frankland
think at all about all the Nazi experiences until the last uh four or five or more years suddenly someone found out I'd been in prison before and I've got very involved in various charities that deal with ex prisoners of war.
Presenter
Let's take a break for some music then. What are we going to hear now?
Dr Bill Frankland
Every now and again I
Dr Bill Frankland
Go to St. Paul's Cathedral and listen to Evensong there.
Dr Bill Frankland
Um
Dr Bill Frankland
And it I actually it's it's quite a long story, but I remember
Dr Bill Frankland
That was a
Dr Bill Frankland
I thought Japanese, girl, and at the end of it, when it was all finished, I s said to her, You were at the service, weren't you? What what takes you there? And she said,
Dr Bill Frankland
I have to interpret from English to Japanese um from three o'clock in the morning, most mornings, to Tokyo. And she said it's very stressful
Dr Bill Frankland
occupation and she said, I get so stressed.
Dr Bill Frankland
She said, I come to even song at Saint Paul's.
Presenter
Herbert Sumption's Nunc Dimitus in G sung by the choir of Saint Paul's Cathedral with Christopher Darnley on organ conducted by John Scott.
Presenter
Am I right in thinking, doctor Bill Franklin, that it was originally through medicine that you met your wife?
Presenter
Yes, uh
Dr Bill Frankland
Um
Presenter
Tell me about that.
Dr Bill Frankland
When I was a medical student, for one morning only, we went to the eye department to learn about eye diseases.
Dr Bill Frankland
And I saw a pretty girl there, and I thought, how can I get to know her?
Dr Bill Frankland
Um so I applied for
Dr Bill Frankland
A job in the Eye Department at St. Mary's Hospital as a senior medical student.
Presenter
Were you were you interested in eyes at all? Well, never
Dr Bill Frankland
No, not not no, not not
Presenter
Uh
Dr Bill Frankland
Yeah.
Presenter
No, uh not at all, really.
Dr Bill Frankland
Really not
Presenter
Yeah. You then you you did find your specialism. It wasn't eyes and it was allergies and you uh were working in St Mary's. You worked with Sir Alexander Fleming, who of course won the Nobel Prize for discovering penicillin. How did you find him to work with? At at a personal level, what sort of a man was he?
Dr Bill Frankland
I got on with him extremely well. We were very friendly, and every morning at ten o'clock I had to see him to talk about the research ward that we we had.
Presenter
But
Dr Bill Frankland
Strangely, he wasn't interested in patients at all. It's time to hear.
Presenter
Some more music, Dr. Bill Franklin. We're on your your fifth of the morning.
Dr Bill Frankland
Queen's College, Oxford.
Dr Bill Frankland
They have various gaudies. It means a happy gathering. Anyhow, there was a story that goes back a very long time, where a student at Queen's had gone to study Aristotle in Greek in the forest just outside Oxford, and he was attacked by a boar, and he threw his Greek book down its throat, and his life was saved, and the boar, of course, died. And they've celebrated this particular episode ever since, with this gaudy special dinner with Carol's. I I happen to be here an honorary fellow, so I get an invitation to all these gaudies and they they're very enjoyable to go to.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 2
This is
Speaker 2
The boar's head in hand bear I, Bedecked with bays and rosemary And I pray you, my masters, be merry, Quartestis inconvivio
Speaker 4
No good.
Speaker 2
Reagan's love is only known.
Speaker 2
The boar's head, as I understand, Is the bravest dish in all the land When thus bedecked with a gay garland, Let us serve a cantico
Speaker 4
We can ferrodeem slowly song in all.
Presenter
That was the Boar's Head Carol sung by Queen's College, Oxford's choir. In nineteen fifty five, then, Bill Franklin, you as I understand it, you actually experimented on yourself. Can you tell me what the experiment was, and what happened to you?
Dr Bill Frankland
I've always been interested in insects, and as an analyst, I'm particularly interested in why do some people have severe reactions and even die, for instance, from a bee or wasp thing. I happen to know that if a mosquito or a flea or any insect bites me, I know all about it. So I thought I would do an experiment to see what happened. So I got an insect which I knew I'd never come across before, one that lives in South America. It's now in the southern states of USA as well, called Rhodius Pradixus.
Presenter
I've always been interested
Dr Bill Frankland
and I let it have a meal once a week. I kept it in my car, and the first thing on Monday morning
Dr Bill Frankland
Before going to my department, the energy department, it would have its meal. And for first meal, no re no skin reaction. A week later, a tiny little papule. And it this slowly increased so that by the fifth meal, my arm was swollen for a good three days. Um and I just said to the department, Well, this is typically delayed reaction.
Dr Bill Frankland
The next thing was
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Dr Bill Frankland
Would the next meal cause um ulceration? We saw a lot of uh leg ulceration in the tropics. Um and as it was just finishing its meal I could feel an itch.
Dr Bill Frankland
A week later, another meal produced a a large raised bit with swelling all the way around it. And the eighth meal I thought I better do in my own sideboard of a hospital, and that caused me severe anaphylaxis. I mean, I eventually had to have three injections of adrenaline.
Presenter
Yeah.
Presenter
To keep to keep you alive.
Dr Bill Frankland
Yes, it w it was a very severe reaction. But uh
Presenter
Yes, it w it was very s
Presenter
I wo I just wonder, round about meal six, didn't it occur to you that it might be sensible to stop, that you were putting yourself in a degree of danger?
Dr Bill Frankland
You know, I was always hoping that perhaps I might be the other way, desensitization and not going the the wrong way, but that's life and I I had to go on with the experiment. It was worth doing. Di was it worth doing? Did you learn something significant? I had what they called a feeling of impending doom, which means you th you think you're going to die and I
Presenter
Yeah, I was all that
Presenter
I think you that
Presenter
I thought that, but no, interesting, I didn't. Let's have some more music, Dr. Bill Franklin. Tell me about Disc Six.
Dr Bill Frankland
Note
Dr Bill Frankland
Mm-hmm.
Presenter
Uh
Dr Bill Frankland
This is a
Presenter
This is a
Dr Bill Frankland
personal interest in someone who I remember being born. I knew her father quite well, in fact we did papers together at Guy's Hospital and and here, not even thirty years later, she is appearing singing in opera and it was marvelous to hear her s singing a major part.
Speaker 4
Image clear and bright, torn and tarnished.
Speaker 4
Oh, you promised.
Speaker 4
Prince Incombram
Speaker 4
One whose features born my heart One whose features born my heart
Speaker 4
It clear and white, dull and tarnished.
Speaker 4
For your promise are prince inconquerable.
Speaker 4
One of our speeches.
Speaker 4
God who speaks, whose fit has won my heart.
Dr Bill Frankland
What?
Presenter
Handel's Falsa Imagine from Act One of Ottone, performed by Louise Kemenet from an edition of Radio Three's In Tune. So, Doctor Bill Franklin, I believe you've retired twice. You retired when you were sixty five.
Presenter
That didn't quite work out. So you retired again when you were 85.
Presenter
Having devoted so much of your life to medicine, weren't you tempted at some point to take up gardening, or go on a cruise, or just slow things down a bit?
Dr Bill Frankland
Well, I don't like cruising and and I think at my age when you're over a hundred you can't do much gardening. How much work do you actually do right now? I try to keep up to date with everything. In fact, since I'm a hundred I have produced
Dr Bill Frankland
three academic papers and I I think that's a little unusual, but I still like medicine in in its various forms and I still see some patients who I've treated, you know, for a large number of years and I still enjoy seeing them. And I go to conferences i if if I if I'm well enough. But I will say that if I didn't continue doing
Dr Bill Frankland
What I call medicine in its broadest aspect, uh, and analogy, and seeing all the researches that's going on.
Dr Bill Frankland
What I do. I I just I'm more senior than I am.
Dr Bill Frankland
Um
Presenter
Loneliness is often
Presenter
Well, people often say that is one of the worst by products of old age. Never mind sort of difficulty hearing or creaky knees. It's actually the idea that all of all of those people with whom you travel through life
Presenter
are dying, and that your best friends have gone. How have you coped with the inevitability of losing those people closest to you?
Presenter
Yeah.
Dr Bill Frankland
I still look at obituary lists to see if any of my friends are still alive, and some of them are, and some of them aren't. But
Dr Bill Frankland
Loneliness, I I agree with you. It's weekends, uh, if if I'm not staying with one of my family, can be extremely lonely when you're when you're on your own. All right, you I can read and uh try and l keep up to date the journals, but when you don't talk to anyone for the whole day, I do my own cooking and and so on, uh, it can be extremely lonely and it it can be quite worrying.
Presenter
And especially given that you are somebody who by their own admission is very interested in people. I'm I'm wondering if you've ever contemplated the idea that you might
Presenter
You know, go into an old folks' home and have other people around you. Do you think you would benefit from that, or does that fill you with horror?
Dr Bill Frankland
I think it fills me with horror bec because what would their
Dr Bill Frankland
interests be in would they be the same as mine? I feel they won't be and and therefore, whatever else happens and you have to think about these things when you're a hundred and three um I would prefer to die in my own home rather than die in a place for old people, as long as mentally I'm reasonably
Speaker 2
As long as
Dr Bill Frankland
Normal. I l I like to be on my own.
Presenter
No.
Presenter
Let's have some more music, Dr. Bill Franklin. We're going to hear Disc 7, and this is the Shoe Man. I am happen to be a
Dr Bill Frankland
Draper and uh um Sir Nicholas Jackson. For the last twenty years he r runs these marvellous concerts in the evening at Draper's Hall, and he en likes to encourage young people. When I I I cheat a bit, I like to s sit fairly near the piano and uh the last concert, for instance, there was a girl playing and just looking at her hands to see what they can do. That she can play for over twenty minutes without any music is is another thing that intrigues me very, very much.
Presenter
That was part of the first movement of Robert Schumann's Fantasy in C Major Obis seventeen, on this occasion played by Marta Argerich. So, Doctor Bill Franklin, um you've lived longer than most, and indeed you've lived through some of the most tumultuous events of human history. What do you think?
Presenter
is the greatest lesson that life has taught you.
Dr Bill Frankland
Oh, that's a difficult one.
Dr Bill Frankland
I don't know.
Dr Bill Frankland
I see so many people who seem to get depressed.
Dr Bill Frankland
By
Dr Bill Frankland
Small or perhaps large things. Marriages go on astray and there are all sorts of things happen.
Dr Bill Frankland
I think I have been very lucky.
Dr Bill Frankland
I have never been depressed and even
Dr Bill Frankland
When I was a prisoner of war, we we were almost hopeful.
Dr Bill Frankland
That we would live.
Dr Bill Frankland
Uh I've enjoyed all all my life, in spite of all my what I call near misses, um, and I I think I've been very happy and I I've been very lucky. I always say I must have a guardian angel looking after me because I've been so near death so many times, but I've always escaped. So I've I've been lucky and I've never been, as I said before, depressed. I still travel around and I um I hope to be in Barcelona in in a month's time, for instance.
Presenter
Loaner
Presenter
It must
Presenter
And I'm sure you will indeed be. Tell me about your final piece of music. We're going to listen to your eighth piece of the morning. Tell me about this.
Dr Bill Frankland
I love I don't know, I always have for a very long time, ever ever ever since I was at school, love
Dr Bill Frankland
listening to to to bands playing.
Dr Bill Frankland
Not only do they play music, but they march when they play. And so you're looking at two things. And I've been round the centre of service.
Dr Bill Frankland
And they'll play this bit of music and it can be very sorrowful and and and and very moving and and it makes you realize.
Dr Bill Frankland
All my friends, they they lose their lives and I've been lucky and I haven't. But I think it's worthwhile looking back and I think the music that the the the band plays, it makes you again think you're lucky.
Presenter
Elgar's Nimrod, played by the band of Her Majesty's Welsh Guards. So, uh, Doctor Bill Franklin, I'm going to send you off to this island now, but before we go I'm going to give you a copy of the Bible.
Presenter
And the complete works of Shakespeare, and you may take one other book of your own. What would you like to take?
Dr Bill Frankland
Uh
Presenter
A booker
Dr Bill Frankland
I read when I was about fifteen or sixteen the story of Son Michele by Axel Munter. Every single chapter is almost a book in itself, and it it's very medical and it and it's f it's fascinating.
Presenter
Right, it's yours then. And you're allowed a luxury too. What would you like to take along to make life more bearable?
Dr Bill Frankland
Double
Dr Bill Frankland
I think a pair of binoculars.
Presenter
Yes.
Dr Bill Frankland
So I could look at birds and possibly the ship that's going to rescue me, I don't know.
Presenter
There you go. Well, the binoculars are yours. I can't guarantee that a ship will come along though. If you could only finally keep one of these eight discs, which one would you s
Dr Bill Frankland
See.
Presenter
If
Dr Bill Frankland
The Robert Schumann of Fantasia of
Presenter
Piano. It's yours. Doctor Bill Franklin, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. Well, thank you very much for asking.
Dr Bill Frankland
Me to talk.
Presenter
You've been listening to a download from the BBC. You'll find more information on the Radio 4 website, bbc.co.uk slash Radio 4.
Is it true that in the 1970s you had a patient named Saddam Hussein? Tell me about that.
Well, I always remember it was very exciting to go to the palace in Baghdad, and of course at that time I and most other people hadn't heard of Saddam Hussein. And it took about twenty minutes to see the great man. And I said, Why are we taking so much time? And he said, Well, so many of his predecessors have tended to be shot, so we have to be very careful. Anyhow, if he wasn't sleeping, praying, or eating, he was smoking. He was smoking at least forty cigarettes or more a day, and this is what is causing his chest trouble. … I thought because he was so addicted he wouldn't give it up. And he said, When are you coming to see me again? And I said, I don't think you're going to stop smoking, and therefore I have no intention of coming to see you again. … But strangely, the following morning when I was waiting for my plane, a little man came up to me and said, Someone you're interested in has done what you want him to do. … I'd given up smoking. That day that I saw him.
Presenter asks
Your father had fought in the First World War. What sort of man was your father?
I admired him and liked him very much. I always looked up to him. My father was very poor, as my mother had been left a great deal of money. In fact, in her early twenties, because she had a very good singing voice, she actually spent one year in Switzerland studying singing. My father was at Oxford, at Boredom College and he'd got a classical scholarship there. But he I had this idea that it would be me that would be going to Oxford and I was lucky that I went there.
Presenter asks
I said in the introduction that there was a moment when it literally was the toss of a coin that saved your life. Can you explain how that happened?
On the troop ship there were thirty five doctors, and when we arrived in Singapore I and this other doctor went to an Indian field hospital, I think it was, and when we'd been there for three days, an officer came along and said there are two hospitals, one is at Tanglin, and it's largely dermatology and some V D, and the other is the main military hospital. The job there will be an estis. We both wanted to go to Tanglin. So this officer got a coin out and he said to me, Franklin, call. I said heads, and it was head. And therefore all was well. And I went to Tanglin. The other doctor went to the main military hospital. And when the Japanese came over, they murdered everyone in the operating theatre, including the patient who was unconscious. So this was one of the occasions where literally a spin of a coin saved my life.
Presenter asks
In 1955, you experimented on yourself. Can you tell me what the experiment was and what happened?
I've always been interested in insects, and as an analyst, I'm particularly interested in why do some people have severe reactions and even die, for instance, from a bee or wasp thing. I happen to know that if a mosquito or a flea or any insect bites me, I know all about it. So I thought I would do an experiment to see what happened. So I got an insect which I knew I'd never come across before, one that lives in South America. It's now in the southern states of USA as well, called Rhodius Pradixus. and I let it have a meal once a week. I kept it in my car, and the first thing on Monday morning before going to my department, the energy department, it would have its meal. And for first meal, no skin reaction. A week later, a tiny little papule. And it slowly increased so that by the fifth meal, my arm was swollen for a good three days. … The eighth meal I thought I better do in my own sideboard of a hospital, and that caused me severe anaphylaxis. I mean, I eventually had to have three injections of adrenaline.
Presenter asks
What do you think is the greatest lesson that life has taught you?
Oh, that's a difficult one. I don't know. I see so many people who seem to get depressed by small or perhaps large things. Marriages go on astray and there are all sorts of things happen. I think I have been very lucky. I have never been depressed and even when I was a prisoner of war, we were almost hopeful. I've enjoyed all my life, in spite of all my what I call near misses, and I think I've been very happy and I've been very lucky. I always say I must have a guardian angel looking after me because I've been so near death so many times, but I've always escaped. So I've been lucky and I've never been, as I said before, depressed. I still travel around and I hope to be in Barcelona in a month's time, for instance.
“I thought, if I am a doctor, I would know how to deal with them as people.”
“I decided I'm going to forget everything that I've gone through. I want to forget everything.”
“I would prefer to die in my own home rather than die in a place for old people.”
“I always say I must have a guardian angel looking after me because I've been so near death so many times, but I've always escaped.”