Recently, I was shown a draft letter intended for opposing lawyers. It contained the word ‘anxiously’. I crossed it out and wrote in the margin, half-jokingly, 'we don’t get anxious, do we?'. It prompted me to think about unflappability.

Historically, medicine and the bar were two professions in which unflappability was highly prized. It was, and to some extent remains, part of their power. There is something almost super human about doctors and barristers. Many of the most feared advocates, from Sydney Kentridge to George Carman, were known for their calmness under pressure. Michael Mansfield KC wrote of George Carman, for example, that ‘there is not a flicker of emotion with him…like an Exocet missile coming out of the blue.’ A quick browse of the legal directories shows that it is still a valued attribute: ‘hard-working, patient and unflappable’, ‘persuasive and unflappable’, ‘technically superb and unflappable, a first-class barrister.’ I found no entry describing a barrister as ‘flustered’, ‘ruffled’, or ‘panicky’.

In medicine, the great Sir William Osler wrote in 1899 that ‘in the physician or surgeon no quality takes rank with imperturbability’, which he described as ‘coolness and presence of mind under all circumstances, calmness amid storm, clearness of judgment in moments of grave peril’. Charles Bryan, an Emeritus Professor of Internal Medicine in the United States, gave a dramatic example of this equanimity. An orthopaedic surgeon from Bryan’s hometown was working in the Accident & Emergency department when two girls were brought in after a terrible car accident. The surgeon saw the first girl and recognised his own daughter. He felt her pulse and checked her vital signs and said 'she’s dead'. Without pause, he moved on to work on the other girl.