Well, Mike, if you'd like to begin talking away about what you're interested in, read to me very well.
I came to Oxford in 1956 to the Department of Pathology as a graduate assistant, and in those days there are very few medical students.
There are about 30 and we had them and you had a tutorial system whereby they one or two or a lot of to you.
And I had interesting people, actually, I had Gath and Grimley, Evans and Bell and Peter Lewis, who is the cleverest chap I ever taught.
And also that man who's become the professor at the Brompton.
I can't remember his name. Gosh, it's called nefarious. Anyway. Keeps sorry.
No, no, no, no, no. He's he's a pharmacologist, actually, but he's professor of medicine.
Yeah. And actually, I come from Bristol because everybody looked down on.
But actually the system of teaching at Bristol was I felt very superior to the aid operation in August.
But because they had a set course in pathology with proper lab facilities and everything that went on for two years,
really during the whole of the ball during the first part of the clinical course.
Anyway, in nineteen sixty, I left, I left Oxford, really because I've done up.
I was always interested in lungs and I'd done a thesis on emphysema and chronic bronchitis and asthma,
and I was asked to go to Columbia University, so I took it.
But luckily, just before I went off, I got a consultant job.
Now, actually, that what depressed me about Oxford was the facility.
The pathology facilities were primitive then.
I mean, I worked in a cupboard, literally in a cupboard next to the laboratory, and there was no window or anything.
It was it was very, very primitive indeed. And I presume this is confidential.
But but you see, Kadhal was the consultant, and he left at about 10 o'clock every morning having done two coroner's postmortems or more.
And Rob Smith didn't do any of the routine work, and as far as I know, didn't do any teaching.
The teaching that he did was an occasional lecture.
Well, I was interested in pulmonary pathology and I went off to work the cardiopulmonary division at Columbia University,
which was in Bellevue Hospital, and Richards and who got the Nobel prise.
I see. And it was it was really a very formative time and I they wanted me to stay.
But foolishly I had signed a contract saying I was going to come back to Oxford.
So I came back to Oxford and I struggled away as best I could now in 19.
The colonel is very friendly with Pickering and he on came over because his daughter was medical.
I was a student of modern languages student at Somerville Under in its stock and its stock.
He was her tutor and so he took us all out to to dinner, to that place in all day.
So it was the Elizabeth of more than one occasion.
Anyway, he he apparently went to see George Pickering and said, Look, what are you doing about Daniel?
He's left and he's doing all sorts of horrible things he doesn't want to do.
And George then in 1964 was asked to form a committee to found the medical school at Nottingham,
and he asked me to be on that committee, and that's how I sort of became interested in medical education.
And there were Janet Vaughan was on that committee and Vaughan Williams, but there were lots of people from outside as well, Cranston and so on.
The thing I remember most about that committee was set up a saying of George Pickering, which I think was absolutely true.
He said what you've got to remember about teaching medical students is that 50 per cent of what you tell them is wrong.
But unfortunately. You can't tell which is 50 percent anyway,
that and then and when that that report was finished and instantly Vaughan Williams wrote the rotor he was, he was a very, very good draughtsman.
And he asked me to become director of clinical studies in 1967.
And they were worried about the numbers. And one of the things I instigated was a letter to every medical tutor in Cambridge,
offering them the facilities in August, and we did boost the numbers.
That was something that I was never given credit for. But I was asked to is that it was a time of flux because the honours school was it was altering.
The final on School of Animal Physiology was being abolished and they were having a broader spectrum of subjects.
And I was asked to report on this and what I suggest should be done that it's coincided at the time of the Royal Commission on Medical Education,
and I wrote this report, which it was in, that was in 1969.
I think I don't know if you want me to go through that, but we're not to repeat it.
No, the main the main is. Well, the thing the thing was, as you could see, the defects in the system are I felt that the clinical course was too long.
The royal commission recommended two years after, and I think that was probably right.
But there were five main defects which I put down, and the first one was there was no formal teaching in special pathology.
Mm-Hmm. And the second one was that I thought it was an uneven balance in the distribution of clinical teaching.
Thus, obstetrics and gynaecology had 16 weeks, which is the same amount as a general medicine and surgery.
You couldn't become and deliver a baby in practise without having done an obstetrics job and done a course in special, specialised cost.
And then there were eight weeks were given to the accident service when many of students reported to me that they didn't have much to do.
They were under employed. And then there was also. The great point of contention was the revision course,
and both the son and myself thought this was a cram course for the final examination and encourages
those students who are saying claim to take an easy life right up to the last possible moment.
And it did.
It did enable some people to pass finals who would otherwise fail and whose general conduct joining the clinical course had not been satisfactory.
And then we felt there was little attention given to newer methods of teaching perhaps knew as wrong.
But anyway,
there was a considerable amount of the instruction in special subjects could be done on a seminar basis and to to bring about these changes,
I suggested a clinical course which is outlined in this thing here.
But there was the question of examinations that was a great thing,
and there was a general desire to to abolish the examination system as it was and do this continuous assessment business.
But unfortunately, there was. Nobody really define what they meant by a continuous assessment.
And I I drawn up the thing about it.
So that sort of set the agenda for the fact that they've got to get some sort
of teaching lab and a patient and suggested going to the Commonwealth Fund.
And I wrote out a case for that which I haven't got here.
But anyway, they sent it off to the Commonwealth Fund under the signature of Beeston and Pickering.
And they turned up, Trump says they now haven't got all that and it was a good building and it was almost complete before the next.
The next thing I'm going to tell you was that Rob Smith, you see, objected to the whole thing.
Absolutely terrible. And we had by this time, Dole was a professor.
I think he came in and he came in 1978 A. Yes.
Yeah, that's how he came to understand. And he set up a working party.
You see, when all then this was partly for them is this little discussed and also the fact that,
you know, the preclinical and clinical people will say wide apart.
And so and we used to meet every Saturday morning to discuss the future of the medical school.
And the first thing I remember was that we interviewed Smith because I made a listing and he complained,
of course, bitterly that he wasn't given a chair. And of course, nowadays everybody seems to have a check, but very, very stay there.
You know, it was a special thing.
And he hadn't really done enough now to, I mean, he had got the brain and everything, but he never did anything in the Department of Teaching.
He just thanked his own fellow nobody. We never saw him.
I mean, never took this. Maybe then, but I always understood he did a lot in the classification understanding of lymphoma.
He did. But sort of he stopped.
He stopped and really stopped in 1978. I can understand that.
Just to go with one of three things make the I can remember lunchtime mortem demonstration.
Yes. By Rob Smith and Codell. Yes. Now, the conditions were terrible.
Yes, they were. Somebody else has poured scorn on the way they were conducted.
Yes, I agree with I did do that. Yeah, they were. They were.
That was a bandleader. And that was in great contrast to what happened in Bristol, actually.
Well, you know, their personal demonstrations were poor and the personal terms went well down.
They wanted to have the pathology centre stage of the intellect.
He did. I didn't. But now I understood that he wanted to shorten the course, as you've said, as you wanted,
and it was the surgeons who stopped him because they wanted people who were trapped as it were.
Well, I don't know about that. I felt there was a tremendous conservatism.
I mean. I don't know how confidential this is, but I I can remember letting him, for instance, saying it was good enough for me.
I said, you know, that sort of thing and I see a lot of that went on.
And Maloney was, of course, desperately awful, terrible, and Corey had gone by then.
That was one of the things I noticed about Oxford was a car anyway.
One of the things you and the Korean. Oh, I think he can.
He left DNA. He was a terrible surgeon. I remember him saying.
I remember him saying to me he used to have me over to do frozen sections of the Oakland hospital.
No payment, of course, and he would always talk about his prowess.
And he said, you know, whole state run saw me do a mastectomy. And he said, Corey, I've never seen anyone do anything like that.
And I felt very gratified because it was not the ironic side of the situation was not mentioned.
No, anyway. Yes. What I meant was I will be basically yes.
Of course, they were all against that. And Rob said it was dead against the whole thing I did against having the teaching where he was located.
And yeah, he was completely anti everything.
And no, I thought to that Pickering was the guy who'd gone to Cambridge and sort of recruited, but really,
it was your race and that one was actually and actually, I think the letter was dictated by me.
But it was, I think it was signed by Brown. Yes, I remember.
But I did that and I was never given any credit for that at all.
And you, you succeeded, John. But no, yes, I did. And yeah, that's never happened in that time.
And didn't it? Yes, it did. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
OK. Yes.
Well, yes. Just see if I got it. Yes, he hit Rosetta's destructive right the way through.
I must say this I this is what I might ever say about Rob since I was quite fond of him and he was in a way very good to me.
But he was absolutely hopeless about this.
I mean, I can remember in my diary, I've got a terrible interview I had with him when he and Canadell wanted to get rid of Winifred Grey.
Do you know Winifred right now? Okay? Well, she became luckily we.
I got her back.
She went out to high Wickham, and then she came back and became my closest colleague and is the primary person on exfoliated cytology in this country,
actually, and written the standard book and everything else but they wanted. She was a marvellous pathologist.
They want to get rid of her because she was a rather diffident sort of person and didn't so stand up to them.
Now what else have I got here? Well, then the doll committee.
The first thing the doll committee did was first thing we did was consider the chair of clinical pharmacology, and this may be of interest to you.
We decided to accept it and from the grant from the MRC and whoever it was,
they were going to give the money and Dole had selected the candidate who is going to be dollari throughout the course.
We got grants in, thank God instead. Yes, that was that.
Now as to the pathology course, they wanted me to become the whatever it was, the head of the taking.
And I didn't want to do that because I thought I felt I felt there was too much of this people antagonistic staff.
I got fed up with it. And so it went ahead and actually it was quite successful.
All right. We had I think they did quite well that course that the students liked it.
And I don't know what happened when Magee came along. He took the whole thing off, I think, but it was it was quite well done and they had to run it.
Well, what happened was I sort of supervised generally, but we appointed Dessau as the man and then a Bradley.
David Bradley Yes, they came and Bradley did rather well.
Actually, I thought he was all too good. Erm, then he went off to tropical medicine.
And then of course, there. Then the other thing that was considered was the planning of the new hospital, which I didn't have anything to do.
It didn't really want to have anything to do with, actually.
And of course, there was David Timms and there was that wonderful woman who was the sister on the gynaecology ward.
Shazam was just, oh, she was splendid.
She really knew her stuff, but she went off to marry somebody else who who, who, who got a manor house out at that Whitney and the three boys.
He was a widower, and I see her from time to time. I cannot remember her name, but she was a rather jolly good person.
And then it was to this hardshell who retired under the circumstances, which we needn't enlarge on.
But anyway, they should really slightly scuppered pathology because they went down to the basement,
you know, and and it wasn't even in their windows or anything.
And I remember the pus of the matron or whoever it was.
I think it was a matron who said, Oh, it doesn't matter. You can have pictures on the walls.
But that was a poor thing because technicians don't like working in electric light.
And it's very this fluorescent lighting is very tiring.
Yes. What else about pathology tips? Was it?
Now he was involved early, but I thought he had given up and Joe Biden, OK, so bad knock was on it too.
But bad? Not really. I know he will. I think he was a figure on the scene.
I don't think he did. David Tibbs was still very much plugged in. He was right.
You know it was. It was Tim's Hodgson and Badenoch and this girl who is a real, matronly figure.
She wasn't the matron, actually. She was a really tough cookie and it is very nice person.
I used to see her quite a bit, but I I haven't seen her for a while.
What else am I going to say? Well, about one, of course, the medicine board.
That's another thing that was absolutely hopeless. John.
French was the chairman, he wasn't very good, died suddenly poor fellow.
But of course, the preclinical and clinical people didn't seem to get on and they they ran us down.
You see the clinical school, they didn't even even got to hear Harry's all the clinical school at that time.
And that was difficult. And Dole actually was the chap who brought it all together and had a proper board concerned
with clinical medicine that was good at the Nuffield Committee was another thing.
Well, I'll tell you something that was very bad, that this was very bad.
This was sort of in the 1950s, late 1950s, the pathology Apollo appointed people as graduate assistants,
which of which I was one, and I'd come from a university appointment in Bristol.
And there you did have time for research and teaching.
But the point is that the graduate assistant was they were paid less than the registrars,
but they did more of the routine work and it was a criminal state of affairs, actually.
But when in those days with the hierarchical structure, one didn't want to complain, but it was a it was a very bad system indeed.
And actually, I've often wondered that Tony Allen personally, I've often wondered whether I should have stayed in Oxford,
but I did because I was offered to go down to Bristol on several occasions and also when when the Nottingham school was founded,
George said, I could have the chair there if I wanted, and I didn't. And well, in Leicester, too, if I didn't die, I'm not.
I'm not very keen on titles. I don't think I think this is not a good thing that.
The people doing the the course you ask rather well, took did the bacteriology sharp and Emerson did the haematology and the and the group did they?
The history has the pathology and there was a nice chap who did the biochemistry.
His accolade did a bad chemistry. Yeah.
So that worked quite quite well. Now as to pathology, because I think come back from memory, this was a terrible thing, really.
And when Alison provided a lot of material, actually, but he gave up really all the thoracic stuff and so letting him bless his heart came to me.
I had them the in 1972. I think it was.
I looked after my daughter. I met her. I came to me and said, Look, would you do the renal biopsies?
And luckily, shortly afterwards we had Morris, and so I switched course to to renal pathology.
And actually, that was very good because we had a good electron microscope and a good chip to do it.
Mr Jerome, do the technical work we've done for his work.
He left because Ivy Florey was a bit difficult and he was he was a good egg.
And so that was a very productive period for me, actually.
Yeah, but in bursts, you always did quantitative stuff.
Oh yes. Yes, yes, I did. I wrote this book on my phone.
This is Bill Ahern.
Yes, I did a lot of quantitative stuff on there, but actually there was one.
One good thing about the department is that nobody tried to direct me and I could have been doing, you know, sticklebacks or something.
But I I did. I was able to do the more commentary of the placenta with Bill Ahern,
which was quite a good bet and some on the kidney, which is good and some on bone.
And those are still quoted as still quoted in the press.
I rang me the other day. I had a saying from the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre asking me for my reprints on all the quantitative changes in back.
And of course, on the line, I did it quite a bit on emphysema.
Yeah. Who when did you retire, Mike? I retired in 1993.
Why didn't you add a personal chair before that? Well, because you were doing their in.
Yeah, I think of his 10 year retirement. I wasn't particularly. I'm not.
I've never been one for the titles, you see. No dull was very annoyed with me because I gave up being director of clinical studies.
I made it up later. But he he wrote somewhere. I got a letter saying I will carry on for many years.
And then he, I think Sidebottom will take me because he said he was there.
I didn't. I don't remember being there.
He asked if I would have the chair you see here, and I didn't want to cause the difficult a lot of but I mean, reason why are you taking care bill?
Oh, they were terrible lot and you know, it compounded it, but it was so and besides,
I well, I can't bear sort of commanding people, and I had enough of that in the army now.
So now I don't. I'm sorry. I was able to ply my empire and I felt it had a very good life.
Very nice indeed. Yeah. You mentioned the Nuffield Committee.
Oh, yes, that was that was, of course, an extraordinary camp.
Crampton Smith had a great, great doctor because he was very anxious that they should keep enough money in.
Well, of course, Dole brought in five new chairs you see paediatrics, neurology,
biochemistry, morbid anatomy and public health and a tremendous achievement.
You see, an adult was the great dole was the greatest person we've ever had.
I mean, I know the difficulties with him, but he was even his greatest person we had.
And of course they want. They want it, the money and the idea that they should be starved of the nothing of any patient anyway.
Crampton Smith is always on about that. Every now, if your committee is the cream on the cake, we should all have equal, but we have more.
You see, I was a favourite favourite thing.
The Crimson had had two favourite things. One was a cream on the cake.
Everybody has equal like that, but we have the cream, OK? The other thing was that my my currency, he used to say, is Death Hills DPhil thesis.
I don't know why I thought that was good, but I know well, that's about numbers.
I mean, are well used to that. But we got it up to 50 pretty quickly and a lot of excess.
And then, of course, they they wanted the UGC gave more money.
But as a quid pro quo, they wanted it up to 100. And the full committee, which seemed to be the influential body as a didn't want to increase numbers.
But Beeson and I both saw the ideal number was 60.
That was the number at Harvard. And it's a number.
The way you could know the name of every medical student without too much effort.
Whereas if you've got 100 or 150, I don't know what it is now. 150.
Yeah, well, you see you. You can't possibly know everybody then.
I mean, I've just been to see a gym hold in hospital.
I mean, he's out now. He had an asthma attack being cross-examined on this issue.
And he said he was somebody came up to treat him very nice and he didn't realise that would be in his house.
But you see, well, that can happen, you see.
I mean, I can't recall all the juniors that came through the department by any means that, yeah, yeah, like anything else we ought to talk about.
I think that you've covered it very well, that you make, um.
Where do you place, Pickering? I know you said about Doe and I had agreed that the DOE could see the future.
Yeah, well, the thing about about Pickering, it was just like the warden of Merton and I've had four wardens.
I'll just tell you this general thing.
Pickering laid the foundation eight, Pickering laid the foundation and Pickering based and laid the foundation, though would not have got anywhere.
He hadn't any when he came. I something like, I keep all the letters I got.
I took him to dinner. I had a dinner for him in Milton and he was very he was very, very grateful, always grateful.
He always mentioned that because he'd got no experience of really medical students and medical teaching at all.
And he was very grateful for that introduction.
But no, and this is a general rule I found, is that some poor chap gets appointed regents professor or warden,
and he works like blazes, getting them money in the foundation of the people interested.
And then he retires, and the next chap comes along and takes the credit.
This is exactly what happened, murdered as well, because my my friend John Roberts and Rex Richards,
you know, they were wonderful, wonderful, wonderful man.
And John went to tremendous trouble to get money from my Japanese staff on that and and Riggs too.
They both terrific.
And then he retired, and this new warden came in and everybody said, wonderful that she's built this new, you know, she'd done absolutely well.
She had done a bit, but. And that happens a lot, I think.
Yeah. OK. I think I think I don't know when they'll talk about Maggie, do we all say yes?
Oh well.