The Barber Shop Quartet

About the Book

The author grew up in South Africa. His book describes a life style of education both in Johannesburg and then in Oxford in the mid-20th Century. A medical career in physiology, general surgery and neurosurgery led to encounters with patients, medical colleagues and tort lawyers whose personal stories, talents and idiosyncrasies colour the book. These histories are painted against the background of the trials and tribulations of the practice of medicine in South Africa in the era when Verwoerd and his successors strode the stage.

Interspersed throughout are excerpts from the life stories and scientific contributions of researchers in the fields of surgical physiology, general and spinal surgery.

The dramatic progress of neuroadiology and aspects of medicine and surgery across the century form a backdrop to the catalogue of life in the "Black" hospitals of Johannesburg.

The problems of medical ethics of survival from womb to tomb, and the conflicts that arise from cultures and legal constraints against the practice of euthanasia, are always in play. Right to life issues contrast with a death wish of some personalities in a morbid field of medicine and add to the drama of life and death played out in the story.

This volume will appeal to doctors, lawyers, patients, road crash victims, and anybody with an interest in the wide fields of medical and social history of the 20th Century.

About the Author

Colin Froman was born in 1935 in Witbank, a coal mining town east of Johannesburg. He was educated at King Edward VII School and the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, where he graduated as a medical doctor in 1958.

He spent time in Medical, Surgical and Obstetrical Units in Johannesburg and Capetown. He worked in London in 1961-2 where he became a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England and Edinburgh.

He joined the Department of Neurosurgery, at the Baragwanath (Chris Hani Memorial) Hospital, Soweto.

He spent 40 years in the practice of Neurosurgery, from 1962 to 2002, in Johannesburg and its environs, with an interlude of three years from 1965 to 1967 when he was Nuffield Fellow in Oxord where he completed a D.Phil. degree in Respiratory Physiology.

He has taught, traveled and written widely in the field of Neurosurgery.

He married Penny Jammy in 1963, and they have three married children and they dote on their eight grandchildren.

He spends his retirement living in Israel, where he writes, reads, swims, surfs the Internet, plays bad golf and bridge and travels to see the grandchildren.