Postgraduate medicine

Bill Strain's Belfast and its Charitable Society1 established him as more than just a doctor who indulged an interest in local history. The book (based on his 1955 Queen's PhD thesis) was wellresearched, well written and well received; an important contribution to the history of Belfast. Three later articles, based on impeccably compiled addresses to the Ulster Medical Society respectively charted the Society's history,2 extended our knowledge of the origins of Belfast medicine3 and drew charming yet candid vignettes of past and present residents (mostly medical) of University Square4 where Strain himself had lived in No 3 (1907-8), No 9 (1913-47) and No 8 (1947-54). In retirement (in Cornwall, now Cheltenham) as is natural he turned increasingly to retrospect and in 1982 published a short collection of reminiscences of his medical training5 which gracefully harnassed a lucid memory to incisive observation to provide telling cameos of contemporaries and a strong whiff of what being a medical student was then like. Now at the age of 84 he explores in this extended pamphlet further crannies from his student days and adds experiences from his graduate training, the wartime RAMC, and his tenure of the Queen's ceremonial office of Esquire Bedell.