How Leon began writing
Created by Sasha one month agoMy father Leon Chaitow is often remembered for his prolific authorship of over 80 books during his lifetime. But too few people realise the decisive role played by my mother Alkmini Chaitow - without whom, he himself declared that none of them would ever have been written. In the earliest days of their marriage, after a busy day seeing patients, every evening he would enjoy her wonderful vegetarian cooking, and then she'd sit him down with a cup of Greek coffee, a few sheets of blank paper, and a pen. Night after night, he'd produce a few laboriously written pages, which my mother would type up first thing in the morning (he hadn't learned to type; she'd been secretary to Winston Churchill) to encourage him to carry on the process. Often, after producing new handwritten pages, he'd also return the earlier typed ones with corrections, and she'd re-do them manually, as many times as necessary. Many of them still fill the cabinet in his office where I now sit.
It hadn't come easily - initially he had raised the objection "but what should I write about?" To which my mum replied "write about what you know." Thus emerged his first book "Osteopathy" (1974) - rejected, rewritten, and retyped, three times before reaching publication. Though slim, it was considered "a much better book on osteopathic medicine written for the public than some of the horrible examples seen in [the USA]," (AOA review, 1977), and, true to the form he established throughout his writing career, included (in the absence of anything remotely resembling an RCT), a series of case histories on the value of manipulation.
The book was reviewed widely and in 1977 an ambivalent review in the magazine of the American Osteopathic Association questioning British Osteopathic qualifications led to a fruitful exchange that laid the groundwork - mediated by my father - for improved British regulation of the profession.
That was just the beginning, and I have clear childhood memories of my mother muttering acupuncture point nomenclature as she entered corrections to just one of his most successful books (they remain seared in her memory and she quoted them at me just last week). I remember him running into her typing room, sheaf of handwritten papers in hand... "Sorry darling, I just added more pages - please could we start again? And onwards she would type....
The PC age was dawning though, and I also remember my father's excitement, in 1984, as he spent what was then a huge amount of money on his first Amstrad word processor (the one pictured is his second one, bought in 1986, still sitting on top of his filing cabinet). My grandfather Max who had accompanied us for the purchase disdainfully told him that it was a waste of money. It left my mother out of a job, but gave her time to be a mother to me, so it was money well spent. And of course, he insisted I learn to type (aged 6) and would sit me down precisely in the same way as my mother had sat him down... telling me it was a skill I would need... (My first typed page was a summary of Lohengrin through my six-year-old eyes... I'd seen part of it on TV and for some reason it had bewitched me, though of course I didn't understand a word)...
My mother typed and retyped over half a dozen books for him before the arrival of the Amstrad, and it became a full-time career. He never did learn to type properly, and to his last, he only used his two index fingers - though got much faster at it as the years passed.
Yet none of it would ever have happened without my mother's ceaseless encouragement, deft handling of his early uncertainty, and patient slog through piles of hand-written papers. Without her, he would have remained a nameless osteopath in small-town UK whose health nearly failed decisively in middle age, and I would never have been born at all. She not only saved his life and nursed him back to health in the 1980s, but nurtured his talents - and mine, and continues to do so. His many tributes to her over the years were not just out of sentimentality, but well-deserved love and gratitude. So when you're thanking him for his contributions, or me for their continuation... thank Alkmini Chaitow too.
It hadn't come easily - initially he had raised the objection "but what should I write about?" To which my mum replied "write about what you know." Thus emerged his first book "Osteopathy" (1974) - rejected, rewritten, and retyped, three times before reaching publication. Though slim, it was considered "a much better book on osteopathic medicine written for the public than some of the horrible examples seen in [the USA]," (AOA review, 1977), and, true to the form he established throughout his writing career, included (in the absence of anything remotely resembling an RCT), a series of case histories on the value of manipulation.
The book was reviewed widely and in 1977 an ambivalent review in the magazine of the American Osteopathic Association questioning British Osteopathic qualifications led to a fruitful exchange that laid the groundwork - mediated by my father - for improved British regulation of the profession.
That was just the beginning, and I have clear childhood memories of my mother muttering acupuncture point nomenclature as she entered corrections to just one of his most successful books (they remain seared in her memory and she quoted them at me just last week). I remember him running into her typing room, sheaf of handwritten papers in hand... "Sorry darling, I just added more pages - please could we start again? And onwards she would type....
The PC age was dawning though, and I also remember my father's excitement, in 1984, as he spent what was then a huge amount of money on his first Amstrad word processor (the one pictured is his second one, bought in 1986, still sitting on top of his filing cabinet). My grandfather Max who had accompanied us for the purchase disdainfully told him that it was a waste of money. It left my mother out of a job, but gave her time to be a mother to me, so it was money well spent. And of course, he insisted I learn to type (aged 6) and would sit me down precisely in the same way as my mother had sat him down... telling me it was a skill I would need... (My first typed page was a summary of Lohengrin through my six-year-old eyes... I'd seen part of it on TV and for some reason it had bewitched me, though of course I didn't understand a word)...
My mother typed and retyped over half a dozen books for him before the arrival of the Amstrad, and it became a full-time career. He never did learn to type properly, and to his last, he only used his two index fingers - though got much faster at it as the years passed.
Yet none of it would ever have happened without my mother's ceaseless encouragement, deft handling of his early uncertainty, and patient slog through piles of hand-written papers. Without her, he would have remained a nameless osteopath in small-town UK whose health nearly failed decisively in middle age, and I would never have been born at all. She not only saved his life and nursed him back to health in the 1980s, but nurtured his talents - and mine, and continues to do so. His many tributes to her over the years were not just out of sentimentality, but well-deserved love and gratitude. So when you're thanking him for his contributions, or me for their continuation... thank Alkmini Chaitow too.
Pictures
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