The NHS is one of the greatest achievements in our history

two pounds I felt rich.” Prof Ellis noticed a significant improvement in patients’ health, which had been “dreadful” before the NHS.

He said: “In my lifetime I also saw diseases disappear, diseases like tuberculosis and polio that devastated young people. Most doctors today have never seen things that were everyday occurrences for us.

“When I was a student we expected one or two of us would go off each year to the sanatorium with tuberculosis in their lungs.

“Back then a patient aged 75 was considered to be really old. People of 80 or 90 got their pictures in the paper.”

As for Dr Davis, who lives in Hove, East Sussex, his first job was at the now-closed Nelson Hospital in Merton Park, South London – staffed solely by junior doctors. He later became a GP in New Southgate, North London, for 30 years, a police surgeon and trained in forensics. Until ten years ago he did ten-hour shifts tending prisoners in police station cells. An expert in sexual crimes, rapes and assaults, he is still consulted by lawyers. He said: “I generally go to my nearest crown court and give evidence on a video link to a court somewhere miles away. “I’m fit and well and plan to carry for a bit longer. The work hasn’t dried up.” The General Medical Council said 60 medics who qualified in 1948 still pay a small fee to stay on the medical register as non-practising doctors.