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When I first travelled to England, it was as a medical student during our “gap year” between the fifth and sixth years of our course. The terms of the elective were broad enough to encompass almost anything medical and as a life experience it was far more valuable than anything that could be taught didactically. After a sojourn in India and Nepal, I headed to St Bartholomew’s Hospital in London to soak up the history that dripped from those walls. As a mere colonial scion, it was repeatedly emphasised to me that the venerable standing of the hospital, with its tradition of almost 1000 years of life on the Smithfield site, was far more significant than some banana republic whose main claim to fame lay in the ability to beat England at almost any given sport. Those history (and sporting) lessons have stayed with me and I have even put pen to paper to discuss the life and times of one of the hospital’s famous physicians and founding members of the sports neurology fraternity—Percivall Pott.1
During my time in London, I worked with David Simpson, who was then director of Action on Smoking and Health (ASH)—a political lobby group directing their energies against smoking …