The Best of Health

60 years ago, being a medical student entailed some hair-raising encounters in the course of training like giving a general anaesthetic without help or instruction, simply because you were the only help available; or assisting in emergency surgery when there was nobody else available.

Distinguished doctors thronged the corridors of Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. Long after the war there was still a vivid memory of Burma and Libya.

Find out why an elderly theatre orderly hinted darkly at “a doctor who got to Dunkirk four days ahead of the field hospital team”. Get a new slant on the Penicillin story and read why the old NHS system in Edinburgh avoided “bed blockers”.

Here is an account of the almost explosive expansion of hospital medicine into ICUs – cardiac arrest teams, coronary care units, positive pressure ventilation, renal dialysis, etc. It was a time of medical progress and high morale.

Born into a family of potters in Stoke on Trent, he served in an industrial sandwich course apprenticeship, followed by several years managing a factory. The Suez crisis forced it to close.

He took up medical studies in response to a challenge and to prove his own ability to make his way without his father’s help.

Edinburgh Medical School was the world’s best in 1957: if he made it there it would be a real triumph.