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Piles of gen on Boney’s doc

Jul 29 2008 by Our Correspondent, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

BILL Place tells me his wife recently had an operation for Dupuytren’s contracture, which is a condition affecting the fingers.

“We were told that it is common in people from the ‘Viking’ races. Being anxious to find out if my in-laws wore helmets with horns on I looked it up on the internet. It is true, though we could find no Viking bloodine.”

Like most occasions when you start an internet inquiry, you find a great many lateral lines of interest.

Bill says he discovered, for instance, that the condition was first explained by French surgeon Baron Guillaume Duputreyn in 1831, a brilliant surgeon who was also famous for treating Napoleon’s piles.

Which no doubt gives Bill a nice line in conversation at dinner parties.

The condition really did come to Britain with the Vikings more than a thousand years ago and is prevalent in the areas they settled. In Scotland.

For example, it was known as “the curse of the MacCrimmons” when it affected the fingers of the bagpipe players of the Clan MacCrimmon.

Which sounds like a mystery that might have been investigated by The Goons and which could, possibly, give Bill another amusing line at parties.

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