In hot water

Next month’s report into who spent all of Simon’s pocket money on a single building will fascinate Maurice Gueret, who fears toes could be in for a roasting

Burning heels

It will be March before we get wind of the half-a-million euro report into the half-billion over-run at the children’s hospital. Healthy Harris, fresh from nappy leave, will be put under very severe pressure to hold the Government line in all scandals. Which is to vigorously wag fingers elsewhere and deny any responsibility. Considering how involved young Simon was just 18 months ago in trying to name the hospital after the capital of Arizona, that could be tough. One line he could take is that, as minister, he is only responsible for photo opportunities. I fear a stink-bomb next month. Even state departments are jostling behind one another for obscurity. A fraction of the over-run would have prevented nurses going on strike. Healthy Harris may have a new line in torture with his threat to ‘hold heels to the coals’ after publication. Should any feet get badly burned during his Pontius Pilate impression, the National Burns Unit is just over on the other side of the big hole in the ground at St James’s.

All bran

My New Year resolve to take the latest medical advice and ingest up to 30 grams of fibre a day is a work in motion. People are quick when mortifying themselves to claim immediate, if somewhat dubious, health advantages. But the truth is that I do feel a lot better already. Even the scales smile back at me on the weekly weigh-in. Whether it’s down to the copious bran flakes, porridge, seeds, nuts and apples, or the fact that cakes, pies, sweets, chocolate, desserts, sugary yogurts, salty fudge and dainties are off the shopping list, time will tell. What I will tell you is that it is no mean feat getting 30 grams of fibre into you each day. The easier parts are two bowls of bran flakes. It’s the other 20 grams you need good teeth for. They say exotic fruits are the way to go, so I may have to get the bus into Moore Street.

Hotel doctor

On my last foray into Dublin town, I was hanging around O’Connell Street, waiting for a number nine, when my eyes averted upwards to the most beautiful art deco building. Standing on what should be Ireland’s principal thoroughfare, it comes as no surprise that the city’s fathers have allowed it become so neglected and tatty-looking at street level. Hammam Buildings is almost directly opposite CIE, and was constructed in the late 1920s to replace the Hammam Hotel that was destroyed in the civil war. Hammam is no Dublin name, the hotel was named after its Turkish baths. They were opened in 1869 by Dr Richard Barter, a Cork doctor who took medical fads from his travels abroad back to Ireland. He had originally founded a huge hydrotherapy centre where he practiced, at St Ann’s Hill in Blarney. Later, he spread his business wings to Dublin, where he was also involved in the Turkish baths near Trinity College. There were not many curative medicines in those days, so doctors with a good sales patter who imported fashionable cures were well supported. Petty medical jealousies also flourished. Arguments about plumbing, incorrect nomenclature of treatments, and whether baths taken in dry air could actually harm patients, filled the medical press. It would appear that Dr Barter’s dryheat methods were actually more in line with Roman baths, and rival doctors built up quite a head of steam over the fact that he labelled them as Turkish.

Bath street

Speaking of baths, I had a nice letter from Mary in Waterford about memorials that patients have put up to their favourite doctors. Waterford’s Bath Street has not forgotten one of its own. A memorial garden with a tall standing stone commemorates former health minister Dr Noel Browne, pictured above, who was born at number 38, just a few days before Christmas, in 1915. Curiously, the memorial is missing a letter, and spells his name Brown, which is just as it was on his birth certificate. The inscription says that his lasting legacy to the Irish people was the virtual eradication of tuberculosis. Noel Browne lived in many places in his lifetime, but as Mary wrote, Waterford hasn’t forgotten him. John Horgan’s biography of Browne describes a car trip the doctor made with his wife down Bath Street later in his life, and he failed to recognise where he was. His wife Phyllis did notice where they were, but thought the houses on Bath Street looked so impoverished that she might upset him by drawing his attention to where he was!