The Surgeons Apprentice: From Medical School to Specialist Surgeon and the many interesting characters met along the way

Second in a multivolume memoir, A Surgeon’s Apprentice follows a young John Case through his medical and then surgical training in an era when penicillin was a new wonder drug. John’s experience training at two universities and eight hospitals during his ‘apprenticeship’ documents a time when the scalpel was the main surgical instrument, endoscopes were primitive, there were no CAT scans or MRIs and haematology investigations and laboratory tests were restricted.Despite the lack of technology—or perhaps because of it—there was a more personal side to medicine, as every patient had a personal GP who knew them. The GOs ran twice daily surgeries and even visited—in their own homes—those unable to attend the surgery. Tragic and poignant in places, up roaringly funny in others, this memoir provides a glimpse of a way of teaching and living that is now lost to us.