"So much misrepresentation has been engaged in by the BMA that the doctors who have voted or are voting are doing so under a complete misapprehension. It has been frightening to speak to some doctors and to learn the extent to which their representatives have failed to inform them about the facts of the case.”

Jeremy Hunt would agree, though he wouldn’t dare say so. The Health Secretary is already the subject of extraordinary abuse from some members of the medical profession over his new contract for junior doctors, whipped into righteous fury by their trade union, the British Medical Association.

"The Prime Minister would still be wrong to give the BMA the scalp it craves - Jeremy Hunt"

That vitriol might surprise people whose experience of doctors is one of compassion. These are caring people who help us in times of need.It can be a shock to learn that healers can hurt, too. But then, it was ever thus.

Those opening words were spoken in 1947 by Aneurin Bevan, the Welsh socialist now remembered by many as the father of the National Health Service. At the time, he was damned by the BMA; barely two years after the end of the war, doctors routinely compared Bevan to Hitler in a row about how much they should be paid by the NHS.