Dr. Archie Kalokerinos

From Part of my life as a doctor :

At this stage I was totally disillusioned with medical practice. And the lure of instant riches was tempting. Early in 1965 Bill and I teamed up with a Kytherian, Jack Cassimatis, and two non-Kytherian Greeks and became opal miners in Coober Pedy.

For a while all went well. We even found opal, and it was beautiful. Then my world fell apart.

Violence was something that I thought my family had left behind many generations before I was born, But this was not so. There was a terrible fight – wild-west style. With six fractured ribs and a ruptured kidney I was certainly a sight to behold. Disillusioned and bitter I drove out into the desert one night – where there was nothing – not even a road – until I was forced to stop and sleep. When I awoke it was daylight. By coincidence (or was it guidance?) I was near a camp of semi-tribal Aborigines. For the first time in my life I was able to talk to such people and gain an insight to their problems. One elderly woman was particularly impressive. When I asked her about infant deaths she said something like, 'We do not know why our children get sick and die. Before the white men came they never died'.

That night I slept under the stars. Those who have never experienced a central Australian night cannot appreciate what a wonder this is. It is as close to God as any living person can get. And it made my tormented brain work. . I recalled what the Aboriginal woman had said, and what Dr Harbison had observed. There was one possibility – when the kids get sick they need more Vitamin C than normal. When they get sick they need blood levels of Vitamin C that can only be achieved by administering Vitamin C by injection. I had not seen any literature suggesting that this could be so. It was just an idea.

The idea saturated me. It had to be right. Unknown to me, there were doctors working in other parts of the world who had observed something similar.

So, it was back to Collarenebri and back to the practice of medicine.

What happened is now history. There were no more strange infant deaths. No longer would I be haunted by the wailing of women in the camp. There would no longer be a need for so many tiny little coffins – just a need to learn more and know more, and teach more.

Now I know why the liver changes referred to earlier are there. And I know how to prevent them. I know a great deal that was hidden to me when I first went into practice. And I am a much better doctor. But I am sadder too, because most of my colleagues will not listen.