SIR,- As a long-standing or, if you will forgive a
small joke, long-lying, bronchitic, may I address myself to my fellow sufferers? We are, in a sense, the people who matter in this discussion, and the regular information in the papers that we are the
victims of the primary killer disease in this coun- try, added to the correspondence over the last few weeks in the Spectator, is not entirely heartening.
We have all, by now, had experience of the deadly depressing wonder drugs. As hospital patients, we have undergone postural draining, in the course of which physiotherapists have thumped the crepuscu- lar daylights out of our lungs, and, of course, we have been taught a wide variety of breathing exer- cises, which we are urged to persevere with once we get home. The trouble is, though, that once an acute attack is over we become absurdly optimistic and, convinced that we are cured for good, fail, after a week or so, to go on with the exercises, par- ticularly as they inevitably draw attention to a condition we prefer to forget.
The other day, though, I was listening, alone, to Britten's Noye's Fludde, which so stimulated me that I found myself on my feet conducting the orchestra and singers with complete bodily un- selfconsciousness. Only afterwards (a little puffed, I'm bound to say) did I realise that without noticing it at the time I had been doing some first-class therapeutic lung exercises. This brought me a step farther; is this why the majority of orchestral con- ductors seem to die from longevity rather than weaknesses of the chest? if so (disregarding for a moment the question of clinical trials and the con- troversy between 'fringe' and ,establishment medi- cine), is it not possible that the exaltation and stimulation of conducting even one classical record on the gramophone might help some of my fellow bronchitics to expand their poor emphysamatous lungs the easy way and thus escape with gaiety from the nagging valetudinarianism against which we constantly have to struggle?
DIANA GRAVES 6 Vicarage Court, Church Street, Kensington, W8
Previous page
