What was a Tonsillectomy?
Having your tonsils out used to be a rite of passage for infants, one you had to pass through to free yourself from your mother’s apron strings. You couldn’t be fully a boy until your tonsils were out.
It happened to me in 1945, when I was six. I have no memory of being ill. That didn’t seem to be the point. Your tonsils had to be removed when you were ready, and that was it. The procedure didn’t appear to include girls. I used to believe that girls mustn’t have tonsils.
It astonishes me now that what seems to have been a mass tonsillectomy programme was being carried out when the war was barely over. Another surprising thing was how little we knew of what tonsils actually were. You didn’t ask questions then. I must have had an idea of where they were, though, because I can recall opening my mouth as wide as possible in an attempt to see them at the back of my throat in a mirror. Perhaps to say goodbye.
I was taken to the old infirmary in town one morning and put in the men’s ward, since the children’s ward was full. Next to me, lying perfectly still, was a man whose heavily bandaged private parts were visible. I didn’t see him move or hear him speak for the whole of my 24-hour stay.
My operation was the same afternoon. I was taken to a small room for what I thought would be an examination but before I knew it I was being held down while a white mask was forced over my face. I rebelled but the chloroform soon took effect. Next thing I was back in my bed, with a sore throat, alongside the motionless, bandaged man.
I had been told that I would be sick after my operation. This had concerned me almost as much as the thought of the operation itself. It had to happen, a chamber pot having been provided for the purpose. The thing I wasn’t ready for, however, was the colour of the sick. It was black.
I slept for hours, but next morning felt fine – almost like a new boy, you might say. Then, before my mother came to collect me, I was offered some breakfast. It was toast spread with marmalade. I hadn’t tasted marmalade before. I found it horrible and have been unable to face it to this day.
The operation was evidently successful. I’ve had no problems with my tonsils since, at any rate. Whether it was necessary, I rather doubt. At a time when medical treatments were less effective than today, removing children’s tonsils was presumably just an exercise in preventive medicine. It petered out and I’m not aware that tonsillitis has been a major health issue in more recent times.
The Oldie’s very own Dr Tom Stuttaford, however, tells us that having your tonsils out was perfectly reasonable, and only went out of fashion about thirty years ago because of the ‘cunning of the Treasury’. ‘Along with other procedures like treating varicose veins and spinal surgery, it was simply costing the NHS too much’, he says. Dr Stuttaford also denies that this was an operation performed willy-nilly, like having all your teeth out and replaced by dentures when you were in your twenties. As a practising GP in those days, his own rule of thumb was that if a child had three or more bouts of tonsillitis in any one year they should have their tonsils out. It was important, he adds, to distinguish between a viral infection and a secondary infection, the latter being the more serious condition, and indentifiable by the presence of ‘a layer of pussy porridge’ over the affected area. Nice. The other reason that it fell out of fashion was of course antibiotics, which quite revolutionised a child’s life.
Now that GPs are being urged to prescribe fewer antibiotics we may well see a return of tonsillitis on a wide scale, warns Stuttaford. So who knows, maybe tonsillectomies will make a come-back and there will be a new generation of small boys and even girls going through this rite of passage.
Brian Darwent
