In 1975, I was asked to take part in an EEC symposium on multiple sclerosis at the CIBA Foundation, now the Novartis Foundation, named after a drug company, at 41 Portland Place, London. Four doors away, at number 49, I saw the Embassy of the People's Republic of China. The idea suddenly came to me that I should call on the Chinese ambassador to see whether it would be possible to arrange for a visit of Irish doctors to China. I had long been fascinated by what I had read about the Chinese use of traditional and modern medicine, and the widespread use of paramedics to improve the health of their one billion people.

I rang the bell at the Embassy and asked to speak to the ambassador. I was courteously brought to see him. Having introduced myself, I asked him if the Chinese government would consider inviting a group of Irish doctors to visit China so that they might see at first hand how the Chinese looked after the health of their people. Three weeks later I received a letter from the president of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences inviting myself and nine other Irish doctors to visit China in May 1976, as guests of the Academy. I was asked to choose the doctors.

Because this was difficult, I wrote to the editor of the Irish Medical Journal asking him to publish a notice that those doctors who would like to go should write to me. There were over eighty replies. I chose doctors who represented different medical disciplines. Besides myself, they included: a professor of social medicine, the medical editor of The Irish Times, a psychiatrist, a neurologist, two general practitioners, one from Cork and one from the West of Ireland, an expert in mental retardation in children, a micro-biologist and a specialist in diseases of the eye. We were eight men and two women.

The visit was scheduled for May 1976 but in March, while energetically doing the dance from ‘Zorba the Greek’ at a party, I ruptured my right Achilles tendon. When it was repaired, my leg was in plaster up to my hip.