Dame Janet Vaughan, DBE FRS, interviewed by Dr. Max Blythe (parts 1 and 2).

Dame Janet Vaughan talks about her family, education and her research work in medicine. She went to Oxford to study medicine in the early 1930s in spite of not having studied any science subjects, other than Botany, at school. She got a scholarship to University College Hospital in London where she researched pernicious anaemia. She discovered that a regular diet of liver and the administration of vitamin B12 relieved the symptoms. She then went to Harvard on a Rockefeller Fellowship. But she was not allowed to work in hospital wards as there were no other women doctors. So she had to do experiments on pigeons instead of patients. In 1939, when London was threatened by German bombers, she had the responsibility for organizing blood transfusion for the injured civilians. It was owing to Janet Vaughan's tireless efforts that a largely sceptical medical world eventually took notice of the benefits of social medicine.