Sweden

Gothenburg was the first Swedish port of call in 1934, where Sven Johannson expertly used a Smith-Petersen pin to fix a fractured neck of femur under X-Ray control. The Seraphimlazaret was visited in Stockholm where Professor Soderlund did a list “with clockwork precision”, and Professor Olivecrona was praised for his craniotomy. Radiotherapy was much discussed, especially as Dr Berven (director of the Radium Hemmet) claimed that it was too scientific to be understood by surgeons. In Uppsala continuous intravenous Evipan was widely used at the Academiska Sjukhuset, founded in 1708 with eight beds – it now has 1200.

In Lund all agreed they had never seen a toxic goitre so beautifully operated on as by Professor Petren. This university city – the size of Cambridge, and with as many bicycles – was again visited in 2002 when the Society travelled by hydrofoil (curiously called a hovercraft) across the Baltic to Malmo from Copenhagen, passing under the new bridge linking Scania to mainland Europe and creating a huge biomedical community of Scandinavian universities, pharmaceutical companies and hospitals. In 1961 and again in 2000, Stockholm was the venue, particularly the Karolinska Institutet, world famous for its cytology and home of the Nobel Prize.