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|url=https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1497911/pdf/bmjcred00601-0041.pdf

|accessdate=2023-03-23

Gairdner attended [https://www.kelvinside.org/ Kelvinside Academy, Glasgow]; [https://www.dragonschool.org/ Dragon School, Oxford]; and [https://www.greshams.com/ Gresham's School, Holt, Norfolk].<ref name="obit"/> He went to school with W. H. Auden and Benjamin Britten and sang madrigals with classmate Peter Pears.<ref name="obit"/>

He read chemistry at the {{UNI|University of Oxford|Oxon}} but switched to medicine, did clinical training at Middlesex Hospital and was awarded his Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery Degree in 1936.<ref name="obit"/> He did his residency (house physician) in paediatrics at [https://www.gosh.nhs.uk/| The Hospital for Sick Children], Great Ormond Street in Bloomsbury, London in 1937-8.<ref name="obit"/><ref name="spence"/> Gairdner described his experience there in a memoir written a half-century later. He wrote, "I recall the sheer enjoyment of working there, but also the periods of overwhelming exhaustion."<ref>{{REFjournal

Gairdner worked as a fellow in paediatrics at [https://www.nychealthandhospitals.org/locations/bellevue/ Bellevue Hospital ] in 1939.<ref name="obit"/> During the Second World War, he served in the Royal Army Medical Corps for five years, retiring with the rank of Major.<ref name="obit"/><ref name="spence"/>

He became first assistant in the paediatric department at Newcastle upon Tyne where he began to work under Professor Sir [[James Calvert Spence ]] in 1945.<ref name="spence"/> In 1948, he became a consultant paediatrician at Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge, and associate lecturer in paediatrics at the {{UNI|University of Cambridge|UCam}}, where he remained until his retirement in 1975.<ref name="spence"/>

}}</ref> Gairdner was pleased with the success of the article.<ref name="obit" />The National Health Service from its inception in 1948 did not perform non-therapeutic circumcision.<ref name="nhschild">{{REFweb |url=https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/circumcision-in-boys/ |archived= |title=Circumcision in boys |trans-title= |language= |last= |first= |author-link= |publisher=National Health Service |website= |date=2018-11-20 |accessdate=2021-09-05 |format= |quote=}}</ref> The article by Gairdner provided the needed scientific support for that position. The article also has been credited with initiating the decline of the practice of circumcision in [[New Zealand]].