Endocrinologist Eric Espiner, who undertook his first medical exploration on a cat, at age 91 remains fascinated by how the body works. Now he’s released a book.
This story begins with a cat. The cat, who came to be known as Buster, was a tortoiseshell cat who lived with the Espiners, a nice, solid family who lived a nice middle-class life, first in Wellington then Christchurch. Eric’s mum was Moss Rose. She had been a nurse. Dad was also Eric but was always known as Sam, short for Samson, because of some Herculean feat of strength he performed at high school, the details of which are lost in the mists of time. He was a French teacher. There were three sons and a daughter.
Eric Espiner the younger, who went on to become an eminent endocrinologist, has written a memoir, A Physician’s Journey: Chasing hormones you never knew you had, and why you need them. It would be fair to say he is much enamoured with hormones, and with talking about hormones, which he can, and does, until long after the cows come home.
He is 91 and works full-time in Christchurch at the satellite campus of the University of Otago, from which he graduated in 1957. He is supposed to be retired from the university. But he turns up every day and gets paid for one day a week. He’d do it for nothing. But 91! Why hasn’t he retired? “Because I’m fascinated by the topic.”
He was reminding me of Father William in that bit of doggerel by Lewis Carroll:
“‘You are old,’ said the youth; ‘one would hardly suppose
‘That your eye was as steady as ever;
‘Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose –
What made you so awfully clever?’”
He thought that was quite amusing, although, he said, the balancing of an eel on his nose would be beyond him. I’m not so sure. He is extraordinarily dexterous, mentally and phsically. He bikes and hikes and plays tennis. He loves classical music.
He says there is the danger of an old, supposedly retired fellow turning up every day to the research lab and becoming “an old fuddy-duddy still hanging around and being a nuisance. Many in my group are happy enough to have me contribute.”
He is about as far from being an old fuddy-duddy nuisance as you can imagine. He goes on balancing that eel on the end of his nose with vast enthusiasm. He uses the word “excited” a lot in his memoir.
“Well, I am. I mean, it’s kept me involved. I’ve never been interested in the financial side.”
From his time as a medical student, he writes: “The tension between, on the one hand, medical ethics, a right to free healthcare and a living wage, and on the other a training in medicine that offered the prospect of unseemly profits was hotly debated in the common room between lectures.”
Some more words beginning with E: he is energetic (obviously), engaging, erudite. And – also obviously – ethical.
Now back to Buster because, in an entertainingly and very odd way, this really is where this story begins. It is tempting to give Buster at least some of the credit for the beginnings of his long career. Mrs Espiner had a hunch that Buster (who was not yet Buster) was a con artist. Tortoiseshell cats are, in 99% of cases, females. Suspicion was first raised by Buster’s lack of feminine traits. She didn’t attract any of the neighbourhood toms. She was useless at hunting. “Notably, on one of her forays abroad she brought back a scone!”
A woman from the SPCA came to examine the feline’s credentials. “She had a marvellous name, Mabel Christmas. She said, ‘Where is the cat? I don’t believe it. Tortoiseshells have got to be female.’ And we found the poor old animal and she picked it up and looked at the genitals. She said: ‘I can’t believe it. I’ve never seen it. It does look like a male.’ In other words she confirmed our suspicion that this tortoiseshell isn’t what he’s claiming to be.”
It was later proved conclusively that Buster was a male. After his demise, a certain budding endocrinologist, aged about 16, dissected the poor creature’s bits. “Yeah. I was interested to know. I mean, Mabel gave her external view but I didn’t see that as the final verification.”
This is a terrible story, I said, not meaning it for a moment. “Is it? So you don’t want to hear the rest of the story?” Yes I do. “Okay, well the testicles should be a reasonable size. They should be the size of a finger nail but these were the size of a pea.” Poor old Buster. “Yeah, well, medicine involves preserving sentient beings and once the spirit is gone it’s a different plane.”
There is a long and complicated endocrinological explanation for poor dead Buster’s balls. Human males can also have the condition, Klinefelter syndrome. Google it, if you should wish. And be very suspicious of a tortoiseshell cat bringing home a scone.
In the beginning
The Espiner clan. The three sons were Donald, Harry and Eric and the daughter Rosemary. Donald died at 17, from aplastic anaemia. This, Espiner describes clinically, is ”where the white blood cells disappear from the blood and there’s no defence against the bacteria. He needed blood transfusions.” And not a bit clinically: “It was a tragic thing. It turned the family upside down, as you can imagine.”
The boys all sat the scholarship exam for Christchurch’s private Christ’s College. Years later, a surgeon told him he really ought to join the Christ’s College Old Boys’ Association. This surgeon said, “You know, that Old Boys’ membership could help your chance of obtaining a registrar posting next year?” He never joined and never will.
“This was not a matter of neglect on my part. Quite the reverse: bullying was endemic in the college and I was very happy to leave the school’s traditions to embrace the spirited university life as an emerging adult.” He told me some stories of the bullying, euphemistically known as fagging, that he said “would shock you to the top of your head”.
Possibly the worst involved him being forced to get into the boxing ring with a six-foot-tall lout posing as a posh boy. Espiner was about five feet tall. The entire school turned up to watch. I asked a stupid question: was he injured? “I was smashed up.”
He never told his parents about how horribly he was bullied. Why didn’t he? “I didn’t see it as being unusual, probably.”
They were a clever lot, those Espiners. Rosemary went on to teach nutrition and dietetics. Harry became a surgeon. We know what became of Eric. He claims to have been the least bright of a brainy bunch.
The idea of any of them going to med school seemed out of the question. Med school was for rich kids. They weren’t rich kids. The only reason they were able to go to med school was because, he writes, “The post-war Labour government created an expanding job market that enabled students to take labouring jobs during vacations. It was a blessing in disguise, both for myself and my brother Harry, two years my senior, who had a career in surgery in mind.
“Not only was the cost barrier removed, but by labouring in a variety of manual jobs alongside a wide range of people (across some five to six years of medical school) we received an education on life at the coalface that no textbook could deliver.
“Where [Somerset] Maugham championed medical training for the writer, I consider working alongside those taking a different and often more gruelling walk in life should be a prerequisite for the budding medico.”
He knew he wasn’t going to become a surgeon because he wasn’t “handy”. He describes his eventual career as having come about by chance meetings. “It’s a sliding-door metaphor in many ways.”
He was vaguely aware there were endocrinologists. Surgeons have always been the rock stars of the medical world. As for endocrinologists, “Well, I think they’ve come up in the world. They were a lonely species at one time. In fact, I had the image of endocrinology as a circus where odd shapes of people of various sizes existed. It was low down in my priorities.”
From atoms and comets
Most memoirs reveal, to a greater or lesser degree, something of the writer. What does his reveal about him, does he think? “Commitment and dedication to the task at hand and interest in how the body works. I’m fascinated by life. I’m fascinated by evolution and origins of life. I read books about how the primitive forms of life existed and how they were welded together out of atoms, from comets, you name it. I mean, it’s far more interesting than any religion.”
His memoir will almost certainly be the first and last where I, or anyone, encounter the phrase “secondary hyperaldosteronism”. And what that reveals about him is what we have already learnt, which is he has an enduring passion for all things endocrinological.
There is, tucked inside the memoir, if you read closely, a truly lovely love story. I asked him to tell me about Mary. They met in Boston where he was carrying out research. A friend took him along to the Down Under Club, a gathering place for people from the Antipodes. Mary, who was from the UK, was working as a dental hygienist for a dentist from New Zealand. She was one of the club’s hosts. He walked in “and there, at the top of the stairs, was Mary”. There is a wobble in his voice. “Yeah, we were hooked.”
They married in 1967; she died in 2010. He misses her still. “Yeah, she was wonderful.” They had three sons: Colin, Stephen and Guyon. The press release for his book concludes: Eric is the father of well-known journalist Guyon Espiner. You’d think it might be a bit irksome to always be the father of Guyon, but not at all.
“No, no. I’m delighted.” Guyon’s eldest brother Colin also became a prominent journalist and social scientist brother Stephen is an associate professor at Lincoln University. Eric notes, with a sense of pride, that his kids went to Cashmere High School, which, although he’d never put it as crudely, is a way of giving a last finger to Christ’s College.
I now know more about hormones and peptides and many other things endocrinological that I ever thought I wanted to know. Or I would if I remembered even a portion of it. That is not his fault. He is a good explainer of things that are arcane to most of us. It also explains why he is an endocrinologist and the majority of us are not.
I asked him to please explain, as though to a simple person, in other words, me, what an endocrinologist does. The short answer is that they study hormones.
If you want a longer answer, read the book, which is for “anyone interested in how the body works to maintain good health, as revealed here by painstaking studies undertaken by committed clinicians – working with scientists across disciplines in a community hospital – where the culture of curiosity is embedded. And how such studies can lead to major advances in diagnosis and novel treatments that improve outcomes.”
He doesn’t really do short answers. Can’t I just get these elusive hormones from a pill? That was a lazy joke. But, “One day, you will! People are currently working on a small molecule that would amplify the body’s own defence mechanisms, thereby preventing a host of damaging changes in our circulation and metabolism.
“A recent paper in Nature said as much, and gave evidence of its efficacy deduced from studies in rodents.”
This story ends with a joke. “The only difference between Romeo and Juliet is an hydroxyl group. (Oestrogen has two, whereas testosterone has one. This would resonate with Winston Peters!)”
I’m still trying to riddle that one out. I did warn him I was simple.
Or you might have to be an endocrinologist to get it.
A Physician’s Journey: Chasing hormones you never knew you had, and why you need them, by Eric Espiner (Quentin Wilson Publishing, $34.99).