When I was a medical student in the 1960s, our lecturers and tutors, all white and male, were a stone-faced mob, devoid of humour and invariably looking down on the rest of the world.

They were more concerned about seeing us pass exams than becoming competent doctors.

Patients in teaching hospitals were but the fodder for students, and were obliged to suffer whatever embarrassments were dished out in the name of teaching the callow youth.

So, we learnt to be stone-faced as well, to look down on our patients, to tell them little about their illnesses.