Revisiting the modern scientific physician

Olli S. Miettinen

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Dr.M. H. Pappworth: The London Osler.
Alexander Franklin

Posted on: 17 April 2002

Posted on: (17 April 2002)
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Dr.M. H. Pappworth: The London Osler.
Alexander Franklin, Physician
CORRECTION
In the 1960s and 1970s London MRCP candidates would crowd the small Harley street room of Dr.M.H.Pappworth;sitting on the floor, on his examination couch and standing. Twenty-five MDs would listed to the short articulate Dr. Pappworth talk continuously for three hours on How to examine a patient,look at an X-ray,and do Spot differential diagnosis from photographs. While he was chatting after the lectu...
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CORRECTION
In the 1960s and 1970s London MRCP candidates would crowd the small Harley street room of Dr.M.H.Pappworth;sitting on the floor, on his examination couch and standing. Twenty-five MDs would listed to the short articulate Dr. Pappworth talk continuously for three hours on How to examine a patient,look at an X-ray,and do Spot differential diagnosis from photographs. While he was chatting after the lecture,students would add a Pound to the little heap on his desk at the other end of the room.(The Pound then was worth $50 today)
Dr.Pappworth wrote "A Primer of Medicine" 2 eds. and also "Human Guinea Pigs" 1967 Beacon Press, on Hospital Experimentation on Unknowing Patients.
We would go to Friern Barnet Chronic Hospital to listen to Heart murmurs in ex-syphilitic & rheumatic fever patients and then describle our finding in proper exam style to the Master.
Students would report back the foibles and questions of MRCP examiners. Hated by the Royal College of Physicians, he was never promoted from Member to Fellow.It was dangerous to one's professional advancement to let it be known that one went to "Pappworth".There was the thrill of excitement in going to his lectures; we were getting Secret Knowledge.
We all knew he was a great diagnostician; yet he once complained over tea in his home on the part of Hampstead Heath known as the "Vale of Health" , that few of his UK students referred patients to him,although he was at times invited to the Far East for Consultation. He attended my Mother in her last illness.
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Competing Interests: None declared.