Muswell Hill former GP imagines John Keats' life as a trainee medic

But before he moved to what is now Keats Grove, he spent four years as a trainee apothecary, and two years as a medical student at Guy's Hospital.

Muswell Hill author and former GP Mellany Ambrose was "amazed" to learn of the poet's medical career, and has penned a historical novel, imagining his time in Edmonton training under apothecary surgeon Thomas Hammond.

A statue of John Keats is located in Guy's Hospital where he trained as a surgeon for two years (Image: Supplied)

"I logged onto the North Middlesex Hospital website one day after a busy surgery, and was completely amazed to learn he had trained in medicine. I had always thought he was a sensitive person, and wondered how on earth would he cope with practicing before anaesthetics and antibiotics?" she said.

"There's hardly any historical record of that time so it seemed ideal to imagine what might have happened and fictionalise it from the viewpoint of the surgeon who was training this intelligent, thoughtful, poetic person."

When Keats' father died in a horse riding accident, his mother abandoned her four children, who were sent to live with their grandmother Alice Jennings. A plaque marks the house in Edmonton Church Street where Keats moved at the age of nine - two doors up from Hammond.

Joseph Severn's painting of John Keats listening to a nightingale on Hampstead Heath (Image: Archant)

He and his brothers boarded at school in Enfield, but when his mother Frances returned desperately sick with tuberculosis, the teenager devotedly nursed her in the holidays.

"His mother reappeared when she was very ill, and sadly died when he was 14. It is a terrible illness, your lungs fill up, you can't breathe, and he would have seen her cough up blood. A few years later he also nursed his brother Tom through the same illness - at the time they thought it was inherited. When Keats saw the arterial blood on his own handkerchief, he knew what was coming, which is very sad."

When Frances died in 1810, Keats left school at nearly 15 to become an apprentice, sleeping in attic of Hammond's surgery for four years. Set in 1814, Ambrose's novel imagines a more robust character than the sickly poet mythologised by his friends after his early death aged 25.

Crouch End author Mellany Ambrose was a GP in Bounds Green and Lisson Grove for 25 years before leaving medicine to write (Image: Supplied)

"At school he had a reputation for boxing and getting into fights, he was energetic, had a good sense of humour and lots of friends," says Ambrose.

"After his death it was almost suggested he was killed by negative criticism, but at Guys he had to attend childbirth, dress wounds and hold on to a leg while it was amputed - he must have been a lot tougher than is commonly thought."

Although little is known of Keats' apprenticeship, there's a suggestion that he fought with Hammond. Ambrose describes more of a father/son relationship, with Hammond berating Keats as a dreamer who reads too much, while the teenager criticises his methods.

Keats lived in Wentworth Place, now the Keats House Museum from 1818 to 1820 (Image: Newsquest Archive)

"In my book at first they don't get on, but they see the good points in each other and develop a grudging respect. I imagine him as a father figure, but weave into the story Keats' effect on Hammond. He is converted to seeing the beauty and poetry in life, and the humanity in the way John relates to patients."

Ambrose enjoyed researching 19th Century medicine but was "horrified by the things they did".

"How on earth do you operate without anaesthetic, or treat an infection without antibiotics. How did doctors cope with seeing such shocking things? In my first week as a medical student, I had to dissect a body. I felt unable to process the shock of it and wrote a poem to help me cope. I wondered did Keats write poems to express his emotions? I suspect his passion for poetry allowed him to escape from the reality of medicine."

Keats' first poem was published in 1816 while he was at Guy's, and he abandoned medicine soon afterwards. Ambrose, who worked as a GP in Bounds Green and Lisson Grove for 25 years, also gave up her career to write.

"I gave up five years ago, I found it quite stressful. There was more and more paperwork, and less and less actual time spent listening to patients," she says.

"The bit I enjoyed was discussing their illnesses, and supporting them, getting to know people over many years; seeing a young woman have a baby and seeing that baby grow up."

Mellany Ambrose's book is out now in bookshops (Image: Courtesy of Troubadour publishers)

Mr Hammond and The Poetic Apprentice is out now, published by Matador. https://www.mellanyambrose.com/