Edinburgh pensioner Dr John Duncan published first book which he says is "love letter" to NHS and Edinburgh

An Edinburgh pensioner has become a first-time author after he penned a “love letter” to his home city and the NHS, for which he spent decades working.

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Dr John Duncan, a retired consultant anaesthetist, has had his first book - The Best of Health - Tales out of Medical School - published at the age of 88.

His book recounts tales from the 1950s and 60s when he was training at the former Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, including when he had to give general anaesthetic without any help or instruction.

Dr John Duncan has become a first time author at the age of 88

“I am absolutely thrilled to have my book published and I hope it is a truthful account of what it felt like to be a medical student in Edinburgh in the 1950s,” said the grandfather of eight, who only started writing five years ago.

“I studied during the golden age of the NHS and the old Edinburgh Royal Infirmary and I was very impressed by the opening address given to medical students in 1957 by Professor Sir Derrick Dunlop, who was a doyen and a household name.

“He urged us to hold on to our high ideals and to be grateful that we could work in the NHS where we could prescribe to our patients what they needed and not what they could afford.”

Dr Duncan was born into a family of industrial potters in Stoke on Trent and made the move into medicine when his then-girlfriend’s father, who was a GP, jokingly suggested he apply to the University of Edinburgh.

Dr Duncan's new book is available on Amazon and in book stores

“He said ‘why don’t you apply’ and I thought to myself ‘right, I’ll show you’,” said Dr Duncan.

In 1957, at the age of 24, he moved to Scotland’s capital to start studying and graduated from the university in 1964.

Dr Duncan worked at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary as a registrar in anaesthetics until 1970, at which point he trained to become a GP which he believed would be a better job to allow him to support his wife Judith and three sons Matthew, Ben and Daniel.

He trained at Simpson Memorial Hospital in the city before moving down to Leicester where he worked as a GP for several years. He then moved to Dunfermline to work as consultant anaesthetist at Dunfermline West Fife Hospital. He retired in 1997.

But Dr Duncan, who was inspired to write his memoirs when his brother Gregory fell seriously ill and all he could do was listen to stories from the pair’s childhoods, said it was his early days starting out in medicine which he wanted to focus on in his book.

“The book is a love letter to the NHS and Edinburgh and the overarching moral of the story is honesty is the best policy,” he said.

“Dedicated to the memory of that great sixties teaching hospital, it is an account of a young man struggling through medical training when things were rather different.

“In those days, the junior doctors at the old Edinburgh Royal Infirmary were cherished.

“I must be the only qualified doctor in Scotland, if not Britain, who knows how to fire a bottle oven.”

The book has been published by Austin Macauley and is available on Amazon and in book stores.

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