ABSTRACT
It was a very long time ago (early 1970), but I can still picture the setting: a large, light and airy corner room, situated on the second floor of the main hospital building, with a big window looking out over the famous Barts (St Bartholomew's Hospital, London) square and its central fountain. I was a final-year medical student and had decided to observe an outpatient clinic held by one of the consultants, Dr Harold Wykeham Balme, a general physician with an interest in arthritis. Wykeham Balme was a somewhat larger-than-life character in the medical school; a big jovial Yorkshire man who was President of the rugby club, and who was often to be found drinking with the “rugger buggers”, where his loud laugh and risqué stories could be heard by everyone nearby. But he did very little teaching and was known to become somewhat grumpy if asked to go out of his way to teach.
