Lawrence Youlten

I only remember one question from my admission interview in 1953: “Is your father a Guy’s man?” My answer, “No, but my dentist is” was evidently enough to get me in. Just as well, as I didn’t know any other medical schools, and hadn’t applied anywhere else. I lived in Hendon, NW London, and used to see Tony Bron on the Underground nearly every morning on the way to Guy’s. Student life was a succession of Rugby matches, (not a single Englishman in the first XV, S African pack, Welsh backs and Irish full back), Saturday night hops and pub lunches, interrupted by the odd lecture or practical class. Many of us smoked, even in practical classes, and Prof Hunt told us we ought to stop, but balanced this by exposing us to carcinogenic fumes preparing smoked paper for physiology tracings.
Guy’s pre-registration house jobs included three months in Casualty, during which time I commuted by train from Hastings. A three-month season ticket was £30 which was nearly a month’s salary. I was married, by then, with a two-year old daughter. Felicity and I were living in a flat under Steve Haynes and his family at Vauxhall when Nigel Knight came down in a taxi at 1 am to tell me Felicity had given birth. I was a student on the Obs & Gynae firm, so had unlimited visiting rights for the fortnight Felicity and Madeleine spent in Victoria Ward; no complications, that was the norm. Our other two children were born in our flat in Trinity Street, where we entertained some of you. Life then became rather a blur with successive and parallel jobs as physiologist, pharmacologist, GP calls and surgeries, (remember Alan Pollock?), police surgeon, clinical pharmacologist and eventually Consultant in Allergy, thanks to Maurice Lessof’s invitation to come back to Guy’s in 1977. I’m still working one or two days a week, and enjoying my five day weekends in East Sussex. Here’s Felicity in our garden with Samiran Nundy, not so many years ago.