Medical students fearful of picking up an infection during their training in hospital should count themselves lucky. In Tudor times surgeons’ apprentices were required to throw their masters’ theatre gowns on the ground and stamp on them before every operation.

This softened fabric had become so caked in blood from previous operations that the surgeons could not otherwise bend their arms.

A dirty operating coat was a sign of a really experienced surgeon who might boast a patient death rate of only 50 per cent, while a clean one suggested a rookie, who could be counted on to lose the vast majority of patients who went under his knife.

Unfamiliar with the concept of germs, 16th-century surgeons, who doubled up as barbers, left wounds open after an operation — in order to let out all the badness inside. Open wounds were then treated daily with vinegar and salt.

There being no anaesthetics at the time, patients were given a leather strap to put between their teeth to prevent them biting their tongues or crying out in pain. This was usually cleaned with the barber-surgeon’s spit.

Barber-surgeons routinely followed operations by bleeding patients with leaches. Although most of these practices would be unthinkable in medicine today, leaches are still used in micro-surgery to help to restore blood flow and to help to reduce blood clots in stroke patients.

These gruesome facts were revealed in all their gory detail last month by the Worshipful Company of Barbers, one of the country’s oldest charities, at a Tudor surgical re-enactment to mark its 700th anniversary.

The display was put on for year-five pupils from St Luke’s Primary School in Islington, North London, as part

of an education programme to encourage more children from deprived backgrounds to consider a career in medicine.

Only 4 per cent of first-year medical students come from the bottom two socioeconomic groups, compared with 27 per cent of students on all other courses, according to the Higher Education Statistics Agency.

Concerned that pupils from certain state schools had no chance of studying medicine at university, the Worshipful Company of Barbers has launched a fundraising drive to raise £250,000 to fund outreach programmes into schools in the poorest London boroughs.

It is also working with King’s College London School of Medicine, through its constituent hospitals, Guy’s, St Thomas’ and King’s

College to run an extended medical degree programme (EMDP).

This offers 50 places each year, funded by the State, to state school pupils from the poorest parts of inner London, who are given an extra year of tuition after their A levels to help them to gain entrance to medical school.

Pamela Garlick, the course director of the EMDP at King’s, said: “We discovered that if you went to an inner London state secondary school, you could not get the A levels required to get into a conventional medical programme.”

Students selected for the EMDP programme are given an average offer of three grade Cs at A level to enter the medical school, compared with the usual offer of two grade As and a B. Once on the course, however, their performance is equal to the other students, Dr Garlick said.

“It’s all about trying to motivate students who happen to go to a school that is not very good academically to study medicine because we think they will make great doctors,” she said.

Primary pupils from St Luke’s school who observed the Tudor surgery re-enactment were suitably impressed. Their favourite bit by far was when the surgeon, played by Rory McCreadie, a professional historical interpreter, pretended to amputate a finger from ten-year-old Robbie Basett with a chisel and mallet.

Masuda Islam, aged 10, said afterwards: “Yes, I’m definitely going to be a doctor. Or maybe a fashion designer. I want to be someone who helps other people. But I haven’t decided yet.”