Meet the Surgeon who Never went to Medical School
How would it sound if you heard someone never went to secondary school not to talk of a higher institution or had a medical degree, yet became a surgeon? Unbelievable, right? Yes unbelievable it sounds. Well, meet the man, Hamilton Naki, who became a surgeon though he never went to medical school. He was born into a very poor family in the small village of Ngcangane in the Eastern Cape, in 1930. Due to how poor background, he only could afford a Primary education before leaving to search for a job just to survive. Luckily, he was hired by the University of Cape Town to maintain the tennis courts on the university grounds. In 1954, Professor Robert Goetz of the university’s surgical faculty asked Naki to assist him with the laboratory animals. He was there for a while and was able to quickly master basic surgical techiques. From there, he started from cleaning cages to performing simple anesthesia. He also assisted in operating on a giraffe. He became the laboratory assistant as t...
