doctor

   This title is mainly addressed in modern times to a medical practitioner, one who has undergone long and rigorous training but does not necessarily hold an academic doctorate. In the USA ‘doctor’ might also be used to a dentist and a veterinary surgeon. Richard Gordon, in The Face-Maker, talks of an American surgeon who ‘disclaimed the English surgeon’s self-assumed title of “Mister”’. The man concerned is known as Dr Sarasen, though a consulting surgeon in Britain would be addressed as ‘Mr’ Smith, or whatever, by his colleagues. Patients would continue to call him ‘doctor’, or perhaps ‘doc’ (see separate article). It is difficult to believe that a surgeon would be annoyed by a layman’s use of ‘Doctor’, but the narrator in The Sleepers of Erin, by Jonathan Gash, says: It was two weeks to the day when I got clearance from the consultant surgeon. I’d displeased him by calling him “doctor”. “Surgeons are addressed as Mister,” he told me testily. “Physicians are addressed as Doctor.” “Sorry, er, sir.” “Never been the same since that Yank hospital series on telly in the ‘sixties,” he grumbled.

   In Martin Arrowsmith, the novel in which Sinclair Lewis dealt with medical practice and research, we are told that: ‘Ordinarily, Gottlieb called him “Arrowsmith” or “You” or “Uh”. When he was furious he called him, or any other student, “Doctor”. It was only in high moments that he honoured him with Martin.’ Gottlieb here is a professor of medicine, and a doctor in the etymological sense of the word, a teacher. Lewis comments fully on another use of doctor, in academic circles, in Gideon Planish. The hero has just given up his job as dean of a college, but though: he had lost the Christian name Dean, still he was Dr Planish, always Dr Planish - that was his first name: Dr; and as such, along with every Colonel, every Reverend Doctor, every M.D., every Monsignor, every Rabbi, every Herr Geheimrat, every Judge, every Governor, he was so highly exalted that he was not merely a man, but a title.

   The academic use of doctor referred to means that the person concerned holds one of the highest degrees given by a university, such as a Ph.D., D.Litt., etc. Those entitled to be addressed as doctor for this reason vary greatly as individuals in their wish, or need, to be so addressed. Those most sure of themselves have the least need for it, perhaps. Lewis himself says that ‘he noted that since his time here. [between the 1920s and 1950s], the Doctoring and Professoring of the faculty members had thinned out. Even that stickler Austin Bull preferred to be called just Mister.’ Lewis is refering to long-established faculty members; one would expect that more recent graduates would wish to hear their title used. Jake’s Thing, by Kingsley Amis, has a man in his late fifties who says to a psychiatrist: ‘And by the way, I have got a doctorate but I don’t normally use the title.’ ‘So it’s Mr Richardson’, says the other, who has previously been addressing him as Dr Richardson. In Names, Designations and Appellations, R.W. Chapman, writing in 1936, says: At Oxford, retaining something of our ancient arrogant exclusiveness, we tend to ignore (officially, and even conversationally) doctorates not conferred by ourselves. I never heard the Merton Professor of English Literature called ‘Dr Nichol Smith’, but I see he is doctor of two universities.

   In earlier times, British barristers were required to be Doctors of Law. Shakespeare makes Portia such a ‘civil doctor’ in The Merchant of Venice, where she ably defends Antonio against Shylock. When she reveals her identity to Bassanio he says: ‘Sweet Doctor, you shall be my bedfellow;/When I am absent, then lie with my wife.’ ‘Civil doctor’ contrasts with ‘reverend doctor’, one who holds the degree of Doctor of Divinity, or who, in earlier times, was recognized as an authority on religious matters. Shakespeare’s main use of ‘doctor’ as a title occurs in The Merry Wives of Windsor, in which there is the French physician, Dr Caius. He is variously addressed as ‘doctor’, ‘bully doctor’, ‘good master doctor’. ‘Doctor’ as a vocative also occurs in The Comedy of Errors, Macbeth, and Cymbeline. In the Merchant Navy, ‘Doctor’ is a traditional nickname for a cook. In ordinary conversation, ‘doctor’ may be used to someone who appears to be assuming the role of a doctor or psychiatrist. Thus in Judith Rossner’s Looking for Mr Good-bar, a man says to a woman that he is taking her home ‘for her own good’. ‘Well, doctor,’ she says, when they arrive, ‘now what are you going to do for my own good?’ In Oliver’s Story, by Erich Segal, a man and woman are exchanging their life stories. She tells him that she was divorced. ‘But then you moved back in with Daddy?’ he asks. This clearly suggests the psychiatrist’s couch to the woman concerned, who says: ‘Sorry, Doctor, I am not that freaky. After the divorce my father wisely sent me on a tour of duty.’