Now the holidays are over and the interns have gone back to universities around the world, things have quietened down at the clinic. No strings of questions from curious minds, no more explaining everything I do. But I will miss them. Their presence is rejuvenating and the brighter students definitely challenge old dogmas.
One of them asked me one day: 'Do you have any heroes or role models that inspired you?' I stared blankly, not because I didn't have one, but because I have had so many I didn't know where to begin. Eventually, I said: 'Have you ever heard of a man named Fridtjof Nansen?' It was the student's turn to look blankly at me.
Nansen was born in Norway in 1861 and is one of that nation's greats. He was an explorer, zoologist, oceanographer, diplomat, humanitarian and Nobel laureate. He started young as a sport skier and held world records at the time. He lived in an age when many places on the planet had still to be conquered, with teams of adventurers seeking fame and fortune through exploration.
Inspired by other explorers, his first famous expedition was the crossing of Greenland on skis. But just getting to the east coast of Greenland to start the crossing was a challenge. He had to navigate a seal boat through an almost impregnable ice pack to find a suitable landing place. He and his team then took to skis and made their way 62km to the west coast.
The Greenland challenge was just a little warm-up compared to his later pursuits. His most famous was his failed attempt to reach the North Pole by boat. A theory at the time held that Arctic ice moved northwards under the influence of the prevailing currents and winds over the pole to the other side. Nansen came up with an audacious plan to test it. In 1893, he sailed as far north as he could, off all known maps, through the pack ice. Then he allowed the ice to pack around his specially designed ship, the Fram, so it was no longer on water but on top of the ice.
He and his crew lived aboard the ice-locked ship for a year, hoping to drift north to the pole. All the while he kept busy with scientific experiments and discovered the Deep Polar Basin, the ocean under the Arctic ice. After a year, he realised the Fram was not moving north but east, and developed his hypothesis that the rotation of the Earth had an effect on the ocean currents and pushed the water eastwards.