More stories about Jansz

Boy scouts and girl guides

            Dr.Janz took us lectures in the physiology of reproduction. We were young and the lectures were racy. Lady Chatterly's lover by DH Lawrence, had been published in the unexpurgated version in the UK at that time. Janz brought a copy of it and read the most lurid parts of the book, from the rostrum of the physiology lecture hall. We listened to all this in air-conditioned comfort. The girls were blushing or could barely suppress their laughter depending on their earlier experiences. A futile effort to keep a straight face among the girls was followed by unrestrained giggling as Janz's reading was accompanied by suitable modulations of the voice and even dramatics. His antics were truly entertaining, the more so because he kept a straight face.

            At this moment, a boy appeared close to the rostrum with a cup tea for Dr.Janz. Suddenly there was a pause in the reading. The open book was kept on the table. He took his cup of tea and introduced the young male who brought the tea to him. "This is Anthony. He brings me my cup of tea. I call him my cup-boy". The boy hurriedly disappeared from the scene too embarrassed to stay there.

            He turned to us and put the question:- "Do any of you know why the Boy Scouts are called 'scouts' and the Girl Guides are called 'guides'. There was a pregnant silence. The answer was given by Janz. "Because the boy always SCOUTS and the girl always GUIDES" it, to the target area". . This was the essence of a lecture in reproductive physiology by Dr.Janz.

                        In our young days we always found it difficult to remember the way in which, stalactites and stalagmites grew. Later I read that the easy way to remember was to imagine the scene - "when the mites go up, the tights go down".

            When we were at the Medical Faculty Dr.Janz told us a similar memory aid. Pubic hair he told us, a secondary sexual characteristic, appeared at puberty. The pattern of distribution of the pubic hair was in the shape of a triangle in both the male and female. The triangle however was placed with the apex pointed upwards in the male and with the apex pointed downwards in the female. "Remember the logos of the YMCA and the YWCA" he told us. YMCA stood for the Young Men's Christian Association and had a logo showing a red triangle with the apex pointing upwards. YWCA stood for the Young Women's Christian Association and their logo was a red triangle with the apex directed downwards. It would have been much simpler to look at our own bodies to verify this but this picture caught our imagination.

            Janz was no ordinary mortal. He had an MA in English and literally knew "Lovatt Evans", our physiology text, by heart. He had a ready temper and would go red in the face at presumed provocations. He would not mix up with the students. He had this healthy humor, more so in the presence of the blank faced girls, who would not smile or laugh at his jokes.

            It was told how he had gone to face an interview for selection for a post in the mental hospital. He was asked a lot of questions and lastly a few questions about the game of cricket. Janz had asked the interview board whether the vacancy he was being interviewed for was  to treat the mental patients  or to play cricket with them. He had got up and walked out. Subsequently he had applied for the post in physiology and got it.