KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 25 — Dr Mahathir Mohamad, who graduated from King Edward VII College of Medicine’s Class of 1947, has revealed that he was once afraid of studying medicine.
During a visit to Singapore last November with his wife, Dr Siti Hasmah Mohd Ali, who was also his classmate, the former prime minister said he saw covered cadavers on a slab in the building on the first or second day of college.
“And I decided not to study medicine; I was scared,” said Dr Mahathir, 100, in a video of him and Dr Siti Hasmah outside the Tan Teck Guan Building that was posted on his social media pages yesterday.
Dr Siti Hasmah, 99, chimed in: “He’s the one who was scared; I wasn’t scared.”
The Tan Teck Guan Building in Singapore, gazetted as a national monument in 2002, was built in 1911 to add to the existing facilities of the Straits and Federated Malay States Government Medical School that was established in 1905 (renamed King Edward VII College of Medicine in 1921). It is currently occupied by the Ministry of Health.
King Edward VII College of Medicine was renamed in 2005 as Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine.
Dr Mahathir said ever since he was a child, he was afraid of corpses and seeing people die.
“So when I came here, suddenly I realised that I had to handle and dissect dead bodies. I went back to my room; I was thinking about it. Finally I decided – if the girls can do it, I should be able to do it,” said the centenarian.
So Dr Mahathir opened the shroud covering a cadaver in the medical school and touched the body. “No more fear.”
“After that, of course I was dissecting dead bodies,” he added.
Dr Siti Hasmah said when they were studying medicine, there were 10 students per forensic table: eight medical and two dental students.
“I remember there was one time, I was the only girl and all the rest are boys. I started pointing [to the body parts]; they were very shy to explain to me, they all ran off. I was the only one left. There was one student who was a married man. He was very nice – Mr Chong from Sabah or Sarawak – so he told me all the body parts,” she said.
“It was a cadaver, naked of course. And I was a woman. The rest are cowards, they’re shy, but not Mr Chong.”
Dr Siti Hasmah was the only Malay female student in the Class of 1947 at King Edward VII College of Medicine, where she and Dr Mahathir first met.
