"I weep for the NHS" | Surgeon Professor Harold Ellis on the evolution of the NHS

[@simplyjustso]

Love this talented wonderful man. Worked with him at Westminster hospital. ❤

[@gilesharris174]

Thank you so much for this informative and emotive interview .... I'm just a GP qualified in 1995 so amazed to hear the first-hand backstory to post war medicine/ surgery and similiarly world war 1 "huts" were being used in Orpington where I grew up well into the late 1980's

[@dd776]

He has not changed since he taught me in 1996. He must be 96yo in this interview!

[@ashsharma3169]

I was a medical student (with 4 others) under Professor Ellis at Westminster Medical School in 1973 (I had done pre-clinical at Cambridge and we came to London for Clinicals). I have written about him in my book called “Out of the Third World” Ashok Sharma (Amazon books). Professor Ellis was a brilliant and humble teacher. All the patients (including the high and mighty-the government ministers and the PM- who wanted to be treated by him (the best) had first to be interviewed and examined by one of his medical students, who were required to get a full history, exam, including a rectal exam (No exceptions, as 30 percent of colon cancers occurred in the rectum). He was fully dedicated to the NHS, unlike other consultants, who worked also at Harley Clinic while on NHS salary and used House men to help them but never paid them a dime. I had an ENT surgeon do that to me when I was a Houseman at Westminster nester Children Hospital. The professor never played such games of greed.

[@BreederUK]

Wondering when this was recorded? Wondering if he's still alive as I remember him telling us in a lecture that he just older than the Queen was.

[@ashsharma3169]

I think at his personal residence!

[@ashsharma3169]

Of course he is alive and 97! Amazing man!