Don, thank you very much for letting me come and talk to you.
And this is the 31st of October, two and three talking about the Oxford Medical School, really.
And you've just been telling me actually about how you came here with the idea initially to read chemistry.
That's right. Yes. But then Christchurch was very acceptable.
They were I guess my chemistry teacher asked the whole group of us who'd attended him for the very first time,
and he said everyone happy with their cause. And I said, I'd like to get medicine and said, please.
And he said, Of course, boy, we'll see that through. Yes, and he did.
So how long did you take on the prelims? These are very important.
And I think they ran parallel with the some of the first medical ones.
And I did that for two terms. And so I extended my time in also from three years and a term up to four years, which is nice and summertime.
And what do you really remember the first two years when you were doing anatomy and physiology mainly?
Yeah, well, one of my great inspirations came in those years because Dan Cunningham and it was the bright, bright light in the physiology department.
Then, of course, they were interested in things respiratory.
And I got a I liked both of them and they taught well.
And I'm sure that is one of the factors that eventually pushed me into respiratory medicine.
Douglas Wood have retired by then, is that right? Pretty slim, Douglas, you know.
Yes. Yes, they they'd gone. But yeah, I've still got that book.
Yes, but how about Meadows of laboratories is the procedure now.
I do remember. Yes. I thought you might. Yes. Yes, that's right.
And of course, one of the most striking episodes in the laboratories was not there, but it was when we were doing the the the dance school.
And when Flora, you know, the microbiologist Varnum volume, he was there.
And during our time, some misguided young man who was in on the course tipped down the drain, I think, with some salmonella.
And he was literally kicked out of the school.
Yeah. Yeah. Um, so did he you know, did he qualify, as it were, if he was kicked out, what did you know?
None of us knew about him. I don't remember. No. No. So what happened to him?
No, no. I mean, certainly not after going to the microbiology.
Yeah. And later on in my life, I as a junior doctor, I met him socially.
He was still as as he was. And because his daughter Dorothy and I were both house officers and the old OWSLA Pavilion.
Yes, she was doing the neurology part with the patients who got, um, tuberculous.
Mutata. Yeah. So it's all tuberculosis. And we because when she was off, I had to do this.
And that was the phase where they were injecting into the spinal cord tuberculin in or right in mind.
You go into this. But Dorothy did it and I did it and it seemed to produce some results.
But of course, how can you say from the way we were I in those days so honest, Miss Smith was a sort of memories of her.
I thought she was a lovely eccentric and a very good neurologist.
The my most lasting memory is quite some time later when I first became a consultant and I
did general medicine down at the old Radcliffe and respiratory medicine up at the Churchill.
But in my first started on the 1st of January 1971, I suppose it could be maybe 70.
And we had two cases of meningitis and one was tuberculosis, and the he took she took him off very quickly.
The other one was was not. And, uh, I sought her advice.
This guy had got an inner ear infection which had spread inwards and he was pretty sick.
And we'd got, uh, mostly organism, uh, pneumococcal, you know, of course, it was pneumococcal and I can see her now.
She came in from one of her outside pursuits, leant over the edge of the bed, looked at the patient,
approached him about it because they said I'd been giving her on the advice of the professor of medicine, no less than besom.
Right. I mean, we've been doing, you know, twenty whatever units they were a day into the into the group of eight.
And she said no, this man needs intrathecal. And that was quite against peace and edicts on that.
And he was after all, an infectious disease am and she said he needs Baho because we couldn't get back into the spinal cord down there in the bay.
Yes. And so she pushed him off into the next and they drilled holes.
And of course, it was purely because of all guns. They got out and he had this the penicillin.
But it is faecal cavity. Yeah. And he was the first one to survive after 10.
Very good. Yeah. And I was very impressed. And she was such a she was such a unique character.
She, you know, she was so very good, so very kind.
I thought she understood patients very well.
And that's because she had a very broad base in her intellectual interests.
She did. But just to go back. Yeah. With your TUJ there for the first two years in Christchurch.
Um, Heaton. Oh gosh yes.
He was just down to what. He was just retiring. Yes.
That was a surprise.
And meeting a man of that calibre and interesting different social backgrounds to the little boy from a grammar school in and south London.
But you know, I mean he taught me quite a lot and there was also a right at the end.
There was a temporary one, too. Didn't didn't I didn't see much of.
But mostly Heaton and I remember going out to his house in St. Giles for a tutorial or to you know where that is.
Yeah, it's just about where some child breaks into the to right.
And it's on the west side and is set back from the road.
It's still a road. I suppose it's still in Christchurch. And did you did he turn to you for schools to for the third year for the anatomy?
And, you know, he'd have gone by then if the your fourth year.
Yes. Yes. You know, I don't remember I can't remember the name of this other guy who was a guy just then.
Livingston No, no, no. And then where did you have your clinical training?
Well, I got I got some sort of exhibition Tebartz had.
Yes, I went to my interviews syntheses and Bardes Dosis clearly wanted me to be able to play rugby and I couldn't.
Well I stopped because, I mean, I did my first year.
I was never a great rugby, but I played in the school first game and not good enough since all of this.
Um, so I'm going to pass. Did you enjoy that?
I did, um. We certainly saw a lot of different people go live, they as you moved around the hospital,
you saw plenty of people there, lots of interesting memories of the bombastic ones.
And I have to say that I wasn't greatly enamoured with the Professor Skowron gun and skull.
That's right. Uh, except for one amazing factor.
One of our group was a diabetic, and he came in to the hospital.
He was admitted to the hospital in a diabetic coma.
And I think he that was the result of. He got pleurisy and he got the fusion skull and treated him himself,
that actually altered my view of him because he'd been I I had felt that he was rather rough on his junior colleagues.
I mean I mean, the consultants that were in his team.
Right. He looked down on them and he made it.
Evidently, he didn't think they were as good as he was. He worked with either a yes.
Yes, he was. I didn't see a lot of it.
Right. He wasn't in the scan team. He was on the edge of it.
Well, yes, but he he was he had more strength.
And some of it was the ones that arrived during my time, but that it struck me that he was not going to have any upstart and pushing him on one side.
And was there a young chap called John Crawl who.
No. No reason. Right. You know, and then you did his job.
Did you know of the story behind that?
Is that in my last year, I got married.
Right. And despite the fact I think I came second in the last and final exams, you know,
and they said if you're married, you either do my house job or you or you stay married, you know?
So that was how it was in those days. I know, but terrible.
Yeah. I mean, these days, I mean, they'd be in the law courts.
I mean with late fifties probably. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Where did you get them. Well I went to one of the places that we went to for our outside experience and that was a Red Hill.
Yes. I enjoyed immensely about the three jobs there started, but surgery then medicine and then I did a non emergency admissions one.
Seeing anything, any need. Yes, that sort of thing is.
And did you know you wanted to be a physician by then? Yes.
It's so I mean, doing surgery first was another thing to be able to darkness.
You know, again, that was a very good experience because and the chap in Norman Pitt was the consultant and he was he was a good surgeon.
And and he let us do things particularly I remember well, perhaps not so much with him personally, but certainly with his senior.
We know there was a senior there, just a registrar may average on him.
That's right. And the registrar whose name escapes me, he was very good to our students first year people, and he allowed us quite a lot of leeway.
And in that six months, I did a dozen appendicectomy and a dozen whatever we would never tonsillectomies to.
I suppose it were tonsillectomies. Yes. Yeah.
And it was a very good experience. Yes. So what about anaesthetics?
Were you doing that too? No, I don't think I ever did any actual.
But as a student, what was your memory of that? Because mine is absolutely primitive at the middle the.
Yeah, I know I can't separate it from other allostatic experiences much later in life, I can't.
So where were you, a registrar registrar? Well, you see, I did so I did eight months there.
Then I came up here. Right. And did I got a post registration house job.
And that was at the OWSLA, right? Yeah, the pavilion.
That's where Dorothy Rodham was working and was on and still.
Yes. It was still there. Yeah.
And you know, we were there in the field of sheep, a couple of buildings and on the the manor house was where the nurses lived.
I enjoy that because we got plenty of experience. So there was a lot of TB still around.
And there was this age where people were doing still doing getting the chemotherapy, right.
Yes. And doing lots of trials. And were you doing the bromide, Rasiah?
No, I don't know. And you weren't having the multiple sclerosis patients, you know, and I was playing tuberculin.
Now they're just tuberculous up there. How long had you intended to come back to Oxford?
I mean, was it a late decision or had you always thought you'd come back to Oxford to work?
I thought no. I felt I would rather go to Oxford than go back to London.
I felt I'd been so deeply debt they wouldn't have me.
But I did want to go back to Oxford and that allows just for that one job.
And so I asked about our things there.
And I guess my next job came when somebody said, why don't you go out to Manchester?
There's a lot of good things going on there. And so basically, I went up there and did a senior House officer job with a chap called Brockbank.
He was one of the traditional old medical bachelors who lived for the medical school and for his hospital.
And he was a tremendous man, lovely big man as well.
And everybody very generous, very kind. You know, one of his first things to me was when we arrived and also he said,
now I want to know that you've got somewhere to live and no happy with that.
Can't have a chap who's wondering about where he's going to live.
And we had we bought our first house there south of Manchester.
So I enjoyed that. And because he was good and Douglas Black was the professor then and he was good, I can always remember several things.
One sees in one's mind doesn't only one of them was the the milk drip for all these people with various forms of indigestion.
Yeah, well, they're also not I don't know.
But this is Paul and I can see those things hanging around the wall.
And then I also got this man was he was a wonderful man because he he has a brilliant mind.
He spoke the most perfect English, Scottish, English, and the way in which he formulated his sentences, both in speech and in writing, was impeccable.
There was a little club where people will be which we will meet, and he would be the chairman there.
And he always had something wonderful to say, if you could hear it, because he had this very quiet voice,
um, and a lot of his jokes were aside and you had to be really all over the place.
And they were always some dry humour, but he was very good.
I can remember in saying this, he said the only people who really need to be in bed are for an illness.
He wanted it for people with renal failure and particularly when there was that.
And I guess what for?
Yeah, he allowed them, but he thought most people shouldn't be lying in bed all the time is right.
But he was absolutely right before he died. Yeah.
So how much of the family would you say doing that job of of the family.
Would you see the family. You mean.
I mean your wife. My own family. Oh no. Well, for that year it wasn't that bad or thought I had to go into Manchester, Iowa.
We lived about. Ten miles away, I was, but I had going above, but then I had two years there doing research.
Jack how right. And whilst I did have some clerical duties, they were data and computers.
Great clinic. Yes, but I did two years then with him.
So you were researching that? Yeah, that was when I did my research. And that was a doctorate, was it?
Yeah. What was that? It was a time when there were two things going on in our area.
People were interested in what they call blue bloaters and ping pong.
And I remember I do that largely gone out of the sights of people these days.
And I think it is because they never the blue bloaters never get to that stage these days because they're treated much earlier than they've got.
We've got better medicine. I mean, I can remember the time when I'm an offline came in.
You had to inject it into a vein. I can India, you know, we really didn't have the kit.
Yeah. And we were interested Jack was interested in whether this was something to do with a controlled and cerebral control.
And and we we did various studies of that.
And we certainly found that the people who were Blue Bloaters, their CO2 was rising very quickly through as they got more sick,
whereas the Pink Panthers, they it it stayed relatively flat and they shot up at the end.
And so we thought that was something to do with central control.
And we did quite a lot of, um, no punctures on the poor chaps and chronic obstructive lung disease.
I don't remember going through any ethics committee or anything like that.
Just a little break in your back. And it was certainly the.
Do you measure the CO2? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's right.
Yes. And we certainly saw it going up and the brain seemed to have no control over it,
whereas in most of the other disturbances of acid base, the body managed to get things right, but it didn't couldn't do it.
I'm here. Right here. And these people, of course, went into respiratory failure.
So that was one aspect of it. We we did quite a lot of work on that and that came into it.
And also we were interested in the the nature of breathlessness.
It was about the time and Jack Howel and more and more and more accountable brought out their Baucom breathlessness.
And it was very it's a very difficult area.
I don't think we got very far the one thing we did manage to show that we were measuring.
Why don't we get this right? Yes, we felt that the real problem with the breath that this was that the lungs were expanding
and instead of you being able to breathe out to the natural equilibrium point,
they couldn't do it. And so all the time they were breathing at that top of their respiratory excursion.
Right. And and I can remember, I think more I'm more accountable.
So this time when we make it and he and he would say to the students, take a big breath in and now try and breathe in and out.
You could see he was absolutely right. And we measured that.
We could show that that was the case and that continue the bit after I you know, when I came here eventually.
So after jackhammers, you came back to Oxford, did you? Yeah.
Yeah. Interpretor convinced. No, that was an interesting one.
I applied for reasons registrar, I suppose, just to register all there is.
I became a senior, right? Yeah. And I didn't I mean, I heard nothing and somebody.
Oh, Ralph Wright was still here in Oxford and somebody in Oxford knew a name.
I just knew him who jacked my train him and they both went to Southampton and.
Yeah, Jack didn't. Yes I know. But that would be late. Yeah.
Know. Sure. Yeah. OK, I can see the guy.
I can't remember his eye but he said to Ralph who got that job and I've about a young appointed anyone he didn't like any of the applicants.
So this chap very cos he gave me a little boost and I had to telephone call what I come down and see Professor Beeston.
I went out, obviously the person there went through his office. We chatted for over half.
Now my my job is I mean again, those were the days.
And so I did a couple of years as a percentage of my dentist or registrar.
And then they when that was out, they made me into a lecturer and I was joined in between medicine and anaesthetics.
So I didn't do anything. And as I was doing lung function there, well, then when it came to the end of that,
um, the job came up with the at the Churchill or the Justice Department.
And again, they gave me a joint job with medicine, but. Yeah.
Yeah. So what are your memories really about? Was the guy who retired, right.
Yeah. What are your memories of Basson. A frustrated man, Gurche.
He was used to being in command when he said something could be done, should be done, it was done,
you know, said he needed to go through the rigmarole of all the universities or anyone else.
So, yeah, and he was like, well, but then in no immediate sense on the wards.
Oh, you have a man. No, I, I'm afraid I think it reflected on everything he did.
I found him a sad but in many ways.
OK. Yeah. And who was holding his hand.
Jim Holt was his registrar. Yeah. And who was the.
They got a guy who went into the, uh. Names go.
Yeah, but went into when he went into the politics side of medicine, Atcheson, right?
Yeah, he was he was the right hand man there.
Yeah. What do you remember of him? Because he was a quiet guy.
Yeah. But he was also very rigid. Yeah. Well, all right.
I'll give you an anecdote of those times.
We had those meetings where the cases that were around the board were discussed so that everybody who have had to say,
I can remember Jim Holt describing a patient, and he said he came from some Irish bog or other.
And I just said lifted his head up with it.
Which bog, Jim, sit wherever it was I used to live?
Well, yes.
No, I don't go that rigid every now. You then. But he still have a door that wasn't rigid.
Nobody. I thought. Oh, yes, I thought because then there was a lot of haematology going on in the cabin had on and not very well.
Sheila good. Yeah. Yeah. So she was very good lady.
Yes. Yes. And Besom was very infectious disease was.
Yes. I don't know how much he was actually doing infectious disease.
I think he is more is much more than that though.
He was called in when there were infectious disease problems of course.
And I remember calling him myself. Yeah. So from business plays did you see anything of Pickering.
Um, not a lot, no.
I mean he was there of there were often what you you saw him about the place
and you sometimes went to meetings or seminars and things that he was doing.
No, I didn't see much.
I think I remember most about him cycling to Oxford, particularly when he got one leg that wasn't operating and still was doing it.
Yes. Yes, I do. Did he French that he had he had osteoarthritis and he had a hip replaced the one time.
But yeah, I forget which. OK, so then you got your job at the just the Churchill.
Yes. General medicine. How easy was it to combine those.
It was OK and I cycled everywhere in those days so I got quite fit because well it was easy enough going down to the,
the old infirmary was a little bit tough coming back out of the church and that was.
All right. We lived in the old road. Yes. Yeah.
Uh, no, I found it reasonable. And again, I got two very experienced seniors and Bill Hamilton and John back.
Um, and the other person who was around then was Bob Marshall.
Yes. I remember very quiet, withdrawn man, almost a painfully shy and company, but absolutely brilliant in one to one conversation and.
If he was doing lung function, you see in that part of surgery before his time, yes.
With Alison. Well, Alison is well, I suppose he must have been appointed by others to do that job.
Yes. Yeah. And when you work for the anaesthetic people that are directly for up at the church,
we didn't I didn't really work with them, even though I had a name, I think, which just where they got the money.
Yeah. No, yeah. I mean, I did a lung function there and I did and yes.
And I did a little bit of research into various things.
There was always there because Cramton Smith would have been going.
Yeah. Yes. Did you.
Yes. I think he'd already started when I when I got that job.
Is he did. Yes. And I liked him enormously. Yeah. He was very, very good.
And John Spalding was around. John was great to me.
So because it's been interesting talking to people, some John should be made the professor of neurology.
And then a bit later, I think he and Crompton's Smith simultaneously applied for the chair of anaesthetics.
Which of them should have got it? Oh, I think Alex.
Yeah, he was he was in need for this. Yes, absolutely.
And I came in touch with them.
That it was a time when there were still patients around who had polio and had respiratory problems,
and it was with the world, particularly with Alex,
we invented this extraordinary machine because we realised that this all tied in with my asset
base staff because these people basically had respiratory failure due to not being able to move,
really. And what we found was it was really quite extraordinary that if we could rather than put them into an iron lung
because they weren't bad enough that if he could give them some device whereby every so often in the day,
three or four times, Alex's team in the in the department produced a an inverted vacuum cleaner, in fact,
a handheld black vacuum so that the air that came out went into a pipe and they put the pipe in their mouth and they put their lungs up.
Okay. I mean, it was crude, but in fact, we found a significant, not clinical and objective improvement by doing this.
And they didn't have to do it on site. That was the interesting thing.
Their CO2 came down, their own steam went up. Right.
Which is and there was I remember some of those patients.
They were absolutely wonderful people. Yes. You know, they would go round the world in a van with all the kids in the back and things like that.
They were, I think, people with that sort of disability.
And I saw it later in life with the system. I process lot.
They've all got guts and by Jove, did it.
I mean, that's half the battle in not over everything, isn't there?
But it certainly is with health. And if you fight it, the doctors can sometimes help you along the way.
So there were huge changes in the chest unit in your time.
Yes. And just talk about those, because what you did change in the sort of patient makes us think,
yeah, you see, it started that well, even before I got a job of their own,
they also had the second bit sunny side that was called,
which was the I think anybody could anybody in the old Raclette could use that for recuperation, for people who couldn't quite get home.
Is there that sort of thing?
But it was essentially taken over for the other forms of justices' and the tuberculosis died down and all the rest built up.
And of course, we were on the side where the John Raclette was going to be put up so that in nineteen seventy
eight nine we were ousted out of there and went to put beds in the Churchill beds in the slide.
And, you know, it was it was a bit piecemeal.
Yes. And at that time we the main respiratory unit settled on the Churchill and we had to move to wards there.
So that was when I just started at the church. You no one had moved.
It was extra, was it? Yeah. Yeah, we are. When when all that was when when when that was knocked down to build the jawan we we were scattered.
Yeah. But before that there had been chest's. Oh yes.
Oh yes. That same time was the TB one right back to the time when I was a house officer.
Yeah. And of course Bill Hamilton and John Bloke retired at about that same time.
So after I'd been imposed for about ten days, about ten years.
And that was when Malcolm Bense game and Malcolm and I were also Bob Marshall.
But we didn't get another new consultant for some time after that.
So we had we had more patients. But because a lot of the patients with respiratory disease came straight to us.
Instead of going to the emergency. Yes, but what if they went to the emergency room,
they came to us quickly and then the other change that then occurred is that the by the time the jail, too, was built, more patients went up there.
And we then got John in imposed and he was developing all sleep and clear stuff.
And so there was a great shift in that direction. But asthma seemed for an outsider to become more important.
Yes. Well, the asthma story is the story there is that in 19 it must about seventy four or five.
I was asked by O u p to write a book on asthma for the lay public.
You know, the series name of disease, follow the words of the father, etc.
Yeah, I had of course been working on asthma with Jack.
How I brought back that far because it was he who worked with Roger.
I'll tune in to produce Intel. Right.
So like it. Yeah. Which was the first drug that ever attempted to be a protective rather than the treatment of emergency asthma.
And it was a good job, but it wasn't very powerful. And so that got me interested in that side of things.
So I've written this book and then in nineteen seventy eight I returned to Warwick, got in touch with you and said, well,
I come on to the Cancer Research Council to look into the question of whether
there is a need for an asthma society or something like that for patients.
So I did. And the short answer to that is we decided yes, we need it.
And so I was the there were there was a lady who had run what they called the friends of the Asthma Research Council.
That was a pure fundraiser. But of course, you can't have fundraisers going to meetings without asking questions.
So it was natural that this should happen. And the other thing, of course, is that during that time, inhalers had come in.
I had the best story about that is one that held by Charles Fletcher.
And he said, I could see we were in the middle of a sort of meely of people.
And he said, I really I realised last week that this organisation is very much needed.
I said to my patient, show me how you use your inhaler.
And she did it like that. And then when in other words, he she she was using her armpit as the place that she thought she was.
But this spray. So, yes, we thought we were probably the regular.
Yeah, yeah. I then I got really embroiled with that because I spent a lot of my time talking about asthma and we went through the first up to nine,
so that was nineteen ninety eight that we started this thing that was called the Asthma Society and friends of the National Research Council,
because the very forceful lady who'd set up that wasn't going to let me go, but she was the first chairperson and I was the vice chairman.
And then she dropped out and I took over. I didn't 99 t yes.
We we met. One of the problems was that the money that had been given to the Cancer Research Council
was ring fenced for that and couldn't be used for the the patient help in any way.
And so we had to raise our money in other ways.
But at the end of the nineteen eighties we managed to get round this, but by some legal thing rather than they were.
And again, I was chairman of that organisation and I still keep in touch with somebody who was the chief executive then.
So, yes, she lives in Herefordshire, along with her husband and several dogs, and I'll be honest,
I go to that part of the World Music Festival where I see her, where we always we meet up.
And so, yes, they ASPO took over a lot of my time and to the end of my career.
And the beta blocker inhalers were their great advance.
And no, I do.
I think I do. I mean. That.
I think that, um.
Yes, all right, undoubtedly they were a great advance,
but it was still what we were all looking for was that was something that could be taken regularly and prevent attacks.
Yes. Because however clever the relief is, by using your bed to do whatever it sometimes is not infrequently too late.
And I sent the one one saw the bad end of the spectrum.
I know there's a lot of mild asthma that is clearly, easily controlled.
So it really was a steroid inhalers when they came in, they gave us much more likelihood of preventing that line from certain cromoglycate.
People were researching that. And indeed, I was involved in one segment called 911.
There was another drug that they thought would be a preventive and wasn't a steroid, but that didn't really last very long.
So they got there and it there still isn't anything.
There's been no real advance in the preventive treatment of asthma since the steroid inhaler.
And Malcolm Benson was doing more. Respiratory failure was a sort of chronic bronchitis, emphysema.
I think we were all doing that. Yes, yeah. Yeah. I mean, we were all very cosmopolitan, actually.
We did. And it was Malcolm and I, we we did whatever came to the door.
And it's still in those days, we're still doing a lot of lung cancer. Yes, of course.
Including the treatment of it. And now that we've been taken away so wrongly, when did you stop medicine?
Oh, that was at the time when the GI Bill to open. So that would be right.
OK, and what made you stop?
Oh, because when Malcolm came, they insisted that he did general medicine and there was no place for me to be annoyed at that or not.
No, no.
I mean, I think it's incredibly important that people are doing a rather specialist area, even though there's very few of us who's got a big area.
It's still specialised in relation to general medicine, if you've done the general.
But we don't make silly mistakes. And I think all people doing specialist things should do a spell, whether it's adequately catered for.
Now, when they do the work, they do three months, a year or something like that, I don't know.
But certainly that continuous spell of Nellie, I think was nine years ago.
Yeah, I never get tired of that. I always remember to Bill Hamilton, although he never did general medicine he'd done he worked in the army.
So you'd see all sorts of other things. But he was very aware of all the non research things that could cause breathlessness.
And if you think about it this enormous, you've got anaemia. Yes, you've got neuromuscular disease.
You know, you've got heart disease. You know, it's a it is very important.
You think things have. Yeah.
And and then Julian Hook and Joe and we had Julian and John Prescott travelling.
I think it was John first and then John, you know, still around Julie and then John.
That was when the last we were given money to get our hands on,
because I think the spell when Malcolm and I were doing a loan, it was pretty hard and.
We always had good seigniorage. Yes, and Morang, too, I can think once you were a consultant, we always NHS or was there any university input?
Oh no I stayed I for.
Up until I became. Up until the time when I became just chessboxing, right, I have two university sessions.
Yes, and they. Yeah, yeah. And then you became entirely and it got yes,
I know the only private patients I saw were those who usually university people who've got some sort of insurance.
And they wanted to come, you know, and say, who can't say that at the moment.
And you'd have been working with her now with Julian, the one who brought genetics in.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. And did that help?
It helped the reputation of the department and they brought a very lively and delightful man here to the department and a man who was.
Quite he had more clever ideas and understanding and indeed success in proving his ideas than most people I know more than his fair share.
He was really he was a very inventive mind.
Yes. But that genetic knowledge has probably not changed things, nor has it the system.
I mean, he's still a well, when he was when he went to Swansea, he was still working on.
I mean, he he was interested in it was he was certainly asked by the whole of allergy.
And he was quite convinced. And I think he had some good evidence.
I was up to it since. But in the chain from the allergy and hitting the part, the damage,
the body in the cell, there was a whole train before you got the allergic reaction.
And in the middle somewhere there, he was convinced there was a very small molecule that could be dealt with.
Right. And that, you know, he was still enthusiastic about the last time.
I haven't seen him for two or three years. And Bill Cookson was here.
And Bill, I haven't seen Bill for ages. And he's down in London, I think.
Yes, that's right. Yes. Now, sort of on the national scene, you obviously have the Asthma Society and there's any other commitments.
And our CEO, you know, well, I was committees of the Thoracic Society, and one always gets one year's term as a president, right.
When you are a sort of figure of, more than anything, a win win.
Ninety two, three arguments here. And what any memories of that.
Yes, but only sort of joking around here.
I mean, the London meeting that it was still at the time when we held a big dinner and ours was on or on that occasion it was out of Madame Tussauds.
Right. And I think I did a jokey speech about my about imagining my various colleagues in there and what they looked like.
Now, looking back, do you think your Oxford education helped you and your medical career?
But I wouldn't have had anybody without it, and I certainly, as I said before,
I certainly think that the physiology, the respiratory physiology I learnt stayed with me and was very valuable.
Yes. And the rest, it all impinged in some way or other.
I don't think there's any way in which it couldn't.
And I yes, I that I, I do I do feel the way in which all Oxford teaches you does give you the ability to think outside the box.
And that is terribly important. Yes. Yeah. And it's it's very important in medicine.
It's. Then cause cystic fibrosis, your brother died.
Yeah, but you saw the changes in that, or were they in paediatrics? Oh, absolutely.
I knew that was and that's that was an incredible change when we got heart lung transplant.
But, of course. One has to say that the genetic people haven't helped, but they tried very hard,
but they haven't got the answer and the success that gradually occurred was just by good medical care with the tools we had available and the
increasing complexity of the organisms and therefore the increasing search for antibiotics and antimicrobials that would deal with those.
And that certainly happened. And I saw that change and I saw you see when my brother died.
And that was an interesting, again, little anecdote.
You say he was 15 at a time when he was born.
The disease didn't exist. It was one of the wasting disease of childhood.
And about 1940, 41, it was split off from coeliac disease that they thought they were now different.
Just a bit of clinical observation that really. And then but now that time, the average survival was two years, you see.
And of course, by the time I came to the end of my career,
it was very obvious because we were finding so many different genetic differences and different types of.
Yeah, and clearly he was a very. Well, you say mild and he lives with degrees, and that was mild in those days.
I remember meeting at some it was a historical conference a lot of us were at about.
I think it's about asthma, really. But Archie Norman was there, who was the paediatrician at Thomas's?
I looked after my brother and I spoke to him and I said who I was.
And I said, I don't suppose you remember my brother. And he said, Of course I do.
And then, of course, they don't. Of course he did. Nobody else lived to 50.
No. Yes. And he was a lucky man to be sober.
But of course, we saw with the the improvement in clinical care not done by the doctors,
but by all those wonderful people who did all the sort of the physiotherapists and the nurses and all that.
And then we got heart lung transplant. Yes. And so you linked up with what I did for you?
Yeah, I. Oh, no. Oh, yes. In that sense, yes.
But what I saw was that the paediatricians in Oxford, Brian Brown,
were they I used to go to these clinics so I would take over the patients when they reached the age that they should be in and out of planning.
And that's continued, of course, since. And of course, now the survival is available today and it is 40 plus.
It's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. That's still just good clinical care with the development of antibiotics.
Oh, I'm with the. Yeah. You will have to have the antibiotics. That's clinical care.
Oh yes. I'm dealing with the disease. Yeah. Um, I mean after the cephalosporins, what have been the big advances in antibiotics to you.
I mean you're asking me to remember the name.
I think you're dealing with the pseudomonas. Yes.
Yeah, yeah. I don't know where they got to with that of the one.
I don't know that. But I think that was the devil.
Yes. And the Harefield. I mean, did you find it easy to get patients in their.
It was if you made a good case, yes, you could get patients in saying yes, um.
We did quite a lot of them and we were down to Papworth, right, okay.
That's the sort of old university, you know, some of the things that I'm trying to think back, I think that was probably took more of us, right?
Yeah, because Maureen Thompson, the paediatrician, she works with afeared, it seems to me.
I mean, when you hear her talk about things. Yeah, well, yeah, that may be some connexion that she's also had and in some direction.
Yes. With Pappa's Terrance English. Oh yes.
He was hurt very much. But you know, they would grade and not done anything.
I should have asked you about that. You want to say.
No, and I tell you one thing, I would say there's got nothing to do with medicine, but a lot to do with the hospital, right?
That is one of the legacies that I should be most pleased to leave behind if it's still there when I first is the hospital orchestra, right?
Yes, because we started that in nineteen when the first concert given by medical staff in, uh, for raising money was in 1978.
And that was a nurse died of melanoma and her parents worked in the hospital and there was a visiting Australian singer.
And he and one of the surgeons who was on they were on the same ward and were asked by the parents,
could they do a concert in honour of the memory of Jill Braudis who had died?
And I was part of that. Then the next year, the Australian who organised it the first he got back to Australia.
So the parents said to me what I did. So we did one. And then it builds up and we finished up.
And we always have done concerts for medical charities. That's the way to get bums on seats.
Yes, because they get all the money. Since we do it in the hospital, there's no fee for the venue.
And in fact, we're doing one Saturday we find you do one a year or three a year, three and and the 100th should fall on in March 16, 23.
All right. Terrific to see that. I mean, I think that I I think I might be remembered more for that, but I know what you mean.
Yeah, I'm sure I'm very I am very pleased that that happened and thinking way back now you had been in.
But I know the medical you know the marriage business, but you must have had an idea of the standard of care.
But and when you came to Oxford, how would you say it compared with both.
Oh, or with Regio, for that matter. If you are talking about the currency where the health service is being lambasted for standards of care,
I don't think that at that stage I was able to draw any conclusion by comparing Oxford parts and Redhill.
Um, but you must have this is a good ship.
Oh, this is a dump. I mean, what was your feeling when you came close to the of a billion?
I think I thought with that directly from Fairbury.
Was. Better, yeah, it was better than but.
It was incredibly specialised, and I'm sure they did great things for people with specialised skills and.
All right, it was also the first aid post for Smithfield Market.
But as students, we can see a lot of that now.
We saw a lot of the specialist stuff.
And as far as our training was concerned, I certainly learnt more about being a doctor and the techniques that you needed to be a police officer.
When I got my office job, rather than in preparation for it, yes,
because I had never done a loved one until the registrar in the surgical ward at Red Hill told me that.
And he had been trained. He'd done a lot of work in Africa where he did a lot of it.
And I know how to do it. But the patient sitting up because he would have to throw them out there.
One, two, three. Right. Yeah, that's interesting.
Yeah. So I, I think Barnes did not give me a good technical training.
Had it ever occurred to you to do your clinical in Oxford back then?
No. Well, no, not many people do. No, no. People said to us, you don't want to do anything that's dangerous.
But at the time I came here, I was the consultant. Yeah, well, at the end of the year before.
The years before. Yeah, I thought it was pretty good and it was.
Did you ever go to the Witchery for case presentations or was he always busy?
No, I went to the military. And what do you think of them? I mean, I always gained something in those.
Yeah. Yeah. I remember, you know, talks about the electrolytes for some reason.
There was always when it would be old cook. Yes, I cook.
Yeah, I cook. He would raise things about potassium.
Yeah. I can I get kind of like. Yes.
Can I am I right in remembering that he was like well I learnt all about potassium and they got their stuff and I know all about sodium.
Now they've got this stuff. Potassium, you know about it.
I don't know.
Probably going to finish. I know the answer. And to say we've done very well.
Thank you very much. I really enjoyed it. Yeah, right.
All the best. And I want to thank you for coming.