Page 8 - Kol Bogrei Habonim - February 14
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Our family was not well off and we were able to My article about my work in Boston was
get grants but we also needed part time jobs. published in the Lancet medical journal and I
felt very fortunate to have had such a great
Medical school was a huge challenge because I opportunity and experience.
had to learn how to study since I wasn’t used to
spending much time at the books in school. I still After graduation, I had to learn how to function
lived at home in Hendon and the underground as a doctor in my internship. Fortunately, most
train journey to the London Hospital in the East of my teachers at the London Hospital were kind
End of London took one hour. I studied in the and supportive, although the surgeons tended to
train and I remember reading Gray’s Anatomy be harder on us. The hours were gruelling and
with all its gory pictures, which must have since in those days house officers lived in the
intrigued the other passengers. hospital we had to respond to calls day and
night, often getting little sleep.
Somehow I managed to survive and pass the
exams. The most enjoyable part of medical Three years later, in 1961, I was invited to return
school was the annual student show. I gained to the Boston University Medical School for a
notoriety with my friends for poking fun at the year. I had just got married and was excited at
hospital senior staff and performing skits and the prospect of a year of teaching and research
antics. without night call or emergencies and in a city
that I knew and had enjoyed. My wife and I had
In my fourth year of medical school, I was a great time, made many friends and at the end
fortunate to be awarded a travelling scholarship of the time we spent two months driving and
to the United States. I was encouraged by the camping for over twelve thousand miles across
Dean of my Medical School to apply since he the whole of the United States and Canada,
was an international authority on medical never expecting to return.
education and he wanted to see how a British
student would function in the United States Back in London I started working at Great
system. US students had less clinical experience Ormond Street Children’s Hospital with more
compared with students in Britain and he sent responsibility and decided that my career should
me as a guinea pig. be in academic paediatrics. I felt fortunate to be
at such a great hospital.
I was happy to have an expenses-paid two month
visit to America and I sailed off on the Queen Four year later, I was offered a position as
Elizabeth with enthusiasm. Assistant Professor at Boston University, which
I agonized over for a year. Despite the
The Boston experience involved making home opposition of our families, my wife and I and
visits under supervision to poor and doctor-less our two small daughters moved to Boston. I was
families living near the medical school. Unlike promoted to Associate Professor in 1968 and
the National Health Service in the UK, families after five years at BU I moved to Harvard
who could not afford medical care had to rely on Medical School as a clinical teacher.
charity or medical students. The patients were
happy to see young and caring “doctors in I became responsible for training paediatric
training” and the students, although anxious, residents at the Boston Children’s Hospital
were very keen to do a good job. where I taught for the next thirty years.
I had a firsthand view of poverty in Boston and In the late nineteen sixties, the urban blight of
its effect on the health of families who lived in the inner cities in the United States became
the shadow of world famous medical centres. pronounced. Affluent families moved to the
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