Trivia: Before They Were Famous, They Were in Healthcare

Well-known British Composer Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958) volunteered with the Field Ambulance Service in Flanders during the First World War. He was deeply affected by the carnage he witnessed during the war, and this horror is reflected in several of his compositions, such as Symphony No. 6.

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Peace activist and international hero Mahatma Ghandi (1869–1948) organized the Indian Ambulance Corps for the British Boer War in 1899 and organized them again for a short time in England in 1914.

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Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929) first trained as a doctor before embarking on a career as a teacher and then leading the extreme left in the Chamber of Deputies. Clemenceau later became the Prime Minister of France. Also a brilliant journalist, he founded L'Aurore and other well-known French papers.

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François Duvalier (1907–1971), known as Papa Doc, worked as a physician until 1943, when he entered politics. Before being elected president of Haiti, in 1957, Duvalier was director of the National Public Health Service and Minister of Health and Labour.

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Doc Holliday (1852–1887) got his name for a reason. The gunslinging gambler, who took part in the notorious O.K. Corral shoot out, graduated from the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery. A few years after he started his dental career, however, he moved west for his health (he had tuberculosis) and met Wyatt Earp.

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Known as the hero of the Cuban revolution, Ernesto "Che" Guevera (1928–1967), whose face now adorns T-shirts worldwide, qualified as a doctor in Argentina before joining Fidel Castro's forces in Cuba in 1954.

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