Monk's moments: Something special

My uncle was a distinguished surgeon; during his national service he did two years of neurosurgery, he wrote his MD thesis on fractures of the tibia, and his MS was a study on postoperative adhesions following laparotomy. In short, there was nothing that he could not have turned his hand to, although he did once ruefully admit that he had never been referred a case of carotid body tumour.