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REVERIE IN A SAUNA

By Hamish MacLaren
Contact the author via the editor by e-mail at christopher.johnstone@ntlworld.com

Lately I’ve been going to the gym after work. Mine is not a punishing regime: twenty minutes on the treadmill, twenty lengths in the pool, maybe a spa if the waters are churning. (Why is it that jacuzzis in health clubs are always breaking down? Like the halt languishing on the edge of a miraculous pool, one longs for the still waters to become agitated.) And then, if I can stand it, fifteen minutes in the sweltering cauldron of the sauna. For me it’s a stress-buster, more intoxicating but less dangerous than a large gin and tonic.

In the baking quietude of the wooden cube, I turn the column of shocking pink sand in the quarter-hour glass, lie down gingerly on the bench, and drift into a reverie. I don’t know what it is, maybe the explosion of endorphins after all that exercise followed by incipient heat stroke, but I feel creative in a sauna. It feels (I imagine) a bit like taking mescaline. My mind starts to develop ideas without any conscious effort. In retrospect, of course, the ideas don’t seem quite as creative as they did in an ambient temperature exceeding the boiling point of water.

Maybe that’s why I embarked on this particular flight of fancy; I marvelled at the extraordinary physiological responses of my body that allowed me to survive for any time at all in this hostile environment. How extraordinary that the cells, the tissues, the organs, the great systems work in harmony to survive and prosper. It occurred to me, (grains of sand to the value of three minutes having slipped past the narrow waist of the test-tube) that the body is governed, that the systems are like the great offices of state, their day-to-day vegetative functioning like the laborious juggernaut trudge of the Civil Service, their communication and integration under the command and control of a ministerial cabinet.

How far, I wondered could this absurd metaphor be stretched? Which organ or system corresponded to which ministerial department?

Clearly, the CNS, the overall integration, the higher functions, the strategy, belonged to Number 10. And Number 11? What of that prickly relationship between PM and Chancellor? Of course, Number 11 was the autonomic nervous system. The budgeting of resource according to supply and demand. The fine tuning of the organism, like the detailed orchestration of a symphony, down to the heavy ground bass.

Home Office? The endocrine system, with all its complex feedback mechanisms to ensure the integrity of the milieu interieur.

Foreign Office? The musculoskeletal system, by which we move and shake in the world.

Defence? The immune system, of course. Environment? Renal. Energy? Gastro-intestinal. Transport? Cardiovascular. Something special should be made of the heart. Let it be London. The mayoralty.

And all that mighty heart is lying still. I liked the notion of the head and the heart being at odds, as is so often the case.

Nine minutes gone; pouring with sweat now. Skin! The largest organ of the body. Part of Defence, I suppose. But surely some of the large organs deserved a special mention. The liver - Trade and Industry. The special senses - Education. The reproductive system... Sport! Enterprise! The male organ ought to be something utterly without responsibility... a minister without portfolio, some sort of Czar, or maybe the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. Maybe this metaphor is beginning to run ragged. And what of the respiratory system? The Air Ministry, as was.

Twelve minutes. Can’t stay in here for much longer. Health? That should be the easiest one to assign in this context, but I can’t think of anything. I’ve run out of systems. Give it to an organ, maybe as part of immune surveillance. The spleen, the so-called “organ of mystery”.

I should have left it at that. It was foolish of me to extend the metaphor, to stretch it to breaking point. I began to fill the ministerial posts with the present incumbents, and to introduce the concept of pathology. Playfully at first: Mr Blair, transient global amnesia; Mr Brown, kleptomania; Mr Hoon, apparently immune to any insult whatsoever... what would the metaphor of an ailing organism represent in the political world? Ineptitude, poverty of ideas, and corruption, presumably. Your fifteen minutes is up. Time to go. Suppose the organism is fundamentally healthy but the external environment becomes overwhelmingly hostile?

That would represent the condition of War. A minute after my sands of time had run out I experienced an out-of-body experience. I floated to the ceiling and looked down dispassionately upon the figure on the bench and began to consider what might happen if the health club attendants inadvertently locked me in, switched off the lights, and went home for the night. How long would the man on the bench survive? An hour? Two hours? What would happen? He would sweat maximally in an effort to retain a core body temperature around 37 degrees Celsius. What would the limiting factor on sweating turn out to be? Dehydration. He would simply run out of fluid. Then two things would happen. His blood volume would deplete and then his circulation would collapse. Before that, the failing systems would no longer be able to maintain the core temperature of the milieu interieur. He would develop heat exhaustion and then he would rapidly go on to succumb to heat stroke. The temperature would begin to creep up - 38, 39, 40... After 40 degrees had been exceeded all the feed-back mechanisms would pack in and the inexorable process of the pathophysio-logical process would begin to develop a life of its own.

He would stop sweating all together. He would turn into a poikilothermic animal. He would develop irritability, confusion, then altered consciousness, delirium, and maybe fits. 41... 42... Then the long slide down the coma scale, knocking off the brain’s hierarchical structures at first piecemeal, and then more globally. He would become decorticate, decerebrate. The brain stem would be the last thing to go. It would carry on functioning, in a desperate last-ditch effort to survive, a citadel under siege. Then the primeval centres of very existence, the respiratory centre, the cardiovascular centre, would begin to send one another confused and conflicting signals. The fried brain cells would swell and the systems would strive to keep them alive. Then the breathing would become sporadic and bizarre as the apneustic and pneumotaxic centres fell to pieces. He would be lying in a puddle of his own sweat, Cheyne-Stoking. Already he would have fallen into the delicious arms of total oblivion. Extinction would follow shortly behind.

Sands-of-time out + 3 minutes... Mr Clarke, xenophobia... Mr Straw...

Get out, quick! That way lies madness.

Other online articles by Hamish MacLaren can be found at:
hoolet edition 50 - Pilchard
hoolet edition 49 - Truth or Dare?
hoolet edition 48 - Zeitgeist
hoolet edition 47 - Appraisal Appraised
hoolet edition 45 - Truth or Dare?
hoolet edition 44 - Reverie in a Sauna
hoolet edition 43 - Bump Up
hoolet edition 41 - Mayhem, Clock and Anti
hoolet edition 40 - Christmas Night on Call

hoolet is the magazine of RCGP Scotland. It is supported intellectually, financially and emotionally by RCGP Scotland.

This issue maintained by Robert Hallam.