Came with two eyes purchased in Sri Lanka:

Singaporean doctor learned from prostitutes, and met a Lankan

by Leong Ching

One of Professor Arthur Lim's favourite paintings hangs in his clinic - an oil he did in 1992 titled Backlane.

Prof Lim shows off his favourite painting, Backlane, inspired by his visits to Desker Road when he was a medical student.

CHONG JUN LIANG, REUTERS - It shows the back streets of Desker Road as they were during the student days of the 72-year-old Prof Lim. Young girls in red stand coquettishly near their open doors in the half light of dusk.

It was a visit to prostitutes there in the 1950s that taught the now-famous eye doctor to see patients in a different light.

As a young medical student, he was asked by his lecturer, Ivan Polunin, who was then Professor of Social Medicine, to go there and 'make some contacts' in order to see how the prostitutes lived. The aim was to understand the spread of venereal disease (VD).

'My teacher was a 6-ft-2 Hungarian and when he went there, all the prostitutes fled in fear. So he told me to give it a shot,' recalled Prof Lim. 'I was told that part of medicine was to understand your patients' lives, so that you can care for them,' he said.

So the debonair young doctor, born into a rich family living in Cairnhill, made his first foray into Desker Road.

He spent two weeks there, chatting with the girls.

'Part of what I learnt was it is very difficult to control the problem of VDs in prostitutes. It is their way of life. They have up to six clients a day, and you send them for tests and within the hour, they could be infected again,' he recalled.

The ladies of the night were obviously curious about him - a well-dressed, courteous man who spoke often with them and did not want anything else.

'One young lady, very attractive, told me: 'Look, is it the money? Don't worry if you can't pay me. We can go upstairs anyway!' I ran away in a hurry!' recalled Prof Lim, roaring with laughter at the recollection.

The result of his two-week study: A recommendation for fortnightly tests and education for the girls on how to protect themselves against diseases.

Trained doctors

Prof Lim studied medicine at the University of Malaya in Singapore. When he graduated at 22, the Government sent him to London for the Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons course.

As the years rolled by, the young doctor went on to become an internationally-acclaimed eye surgeon.

Prof Lim has roamed the streets of Kolkata in India, the backyards of China and operated on the eyes of the world's poorest. Since then, 2,500 doctors have been trained and together, they have given sight back to more than one million people.

Just last week, he went to Kolkata to meet Sister Nirmala, now the head of Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity. He is already planning to work with some charity groups there. 'That, for me, is the point of medicine - not to make money, although money is useful. But the main point of medicine should be to help those who cannot help themselves.

'John Wong, the dean of medicine at NUS, had gone to India and told me that he wished medical students here could go there and learn the ethics and value of medicine. Doctors need to have compassion,' he said. It is clear that medicine, in general, and opthamology, in particular, is something that Prof Lim loves.

He is now emeritus senior consultant at the Singapore National Eye Centre as well as clinical professor at the Department of Ophthalmology at the National University of Singapore. He also continues to see patients at his sprawling Gleneagles clinic, which is rumoured to contain artwork worth $5m.

The professor has come across many interesting incidents during the course of his work. 'Oh, the stories I can tell you. There was a man who dashed into my clinic with two eyes he bought in Sri Lanka. 'Doc quick, get these into my mother!' he cried.

'Then I shouted back at him: 'Where is your mother?' He had left her behind! They were not Singaporean, you see. In the end he had to get another pair of eyes and I transplanted them successfully.

'Another time, I operated on a man who had been blind for the longest time. He got married and had never seen his wife.

'I fixed his eyes. He had perfect vision, and he was telling me, 'I can't wait to see my wife.' 'I was thinking to myself - I hope you like the way she looks!' he said, with a twinkle in his eye.

Prof Lim had his book, A Doctor's Diary, turned into a romantic musical, Man Of Letters.

It was written by Dick Lee and performed at the 100th year celebrations of the National University of Singapore, Prof Lim's alma mater, this year.He is also active in philanthropy and, since the 1990s, has picked up his first love - art. He had wanted to study art but had been persuaded by his father to take up medicine.

He met his wife, Mrs Lim Poh Geok, when they were both university students here.

They have three children - Dr Richard Lim, 48, a businessman in San Francisco, Professor Lynette Lim, 46, who teaches maths at the Australian National University in Canberra, and Mrs Michelle Wilks, 44, a housewife living in Auckland, New Zealand.

(Singapore - Electric New Paper)