The late poet Philip Larkin, who could always be relied on to expose some awkward home truths about British life, once declared that “sexual intercourse began in 1963″.

His poem Annus Mirabilis famously links the start of the sexual revolution with the “Beatles’ first LP”. But the results of a survey into sexual attitudes and behaviour, conducted 14 years earlier, reveal the British had developed a hearty lust for sexual . Only, no one would openly discuss it.

In these liberated times, when sex is almost a constant undercurrent of everyday life, it’s hard to imagine how much of a taboo sex once was.

Yet when a group of young researchers set out to probe British sexual behaviour in 1949 their findings were considered so outrageous they were instantly swept under the carpet; banished to the archives of a university.

Only now, more than 50 years on, have the results come to light, revealed in a new BBC programme. The findings show that the prim and proper faade of post-war Britain hid some remarkable truths about sexual attitudes and experience.

Rose Hacker: “Many men were impotent, seeing their wives as pure”

One in four men admitted to having had sex with prostitutes, one in five women owned up to an extra-marital affair, while the same proportion of both sexes said they had had a homosexual experience.

Dubbed Little Kinsey, after the Kinsey Report into the secret sex lives of American men in 1948, this was the UK’s first nationwide sex survey. And it went a step further than its American counterpart by including women among its respondents.

The study was the idea of a group of young social anthropologists called Mass Observation. Ten years earlier, in 1939, they had begun secretly recording the sexual behaviour of Northern mill workers by snooping on them during their week’s holiday in Blackpool.

It was highly invasive, but all part of the group’s plan to document and understand ordinary people’s lives.

The 1949 study was vastly more ambitious, employing 24 full-time observers and 450 volunteers. But before they could get to asking the awkward questions, they first had to win the confidence of potential interviewees.

One of the original Little Kinsey Enlarge Image

Each had their own tactics, but it could start with striking up a friendly, innocuous conversation with a stranger in the High Street.

“It was very difficult in those days to talk about anything at all,” recalls Rose Hacker, one of the researchers. Now 99, she is Britain’s oldest sex therapist.

“I remember a woman coming to me again and again… for a weekly meeting… then she’d go away and at the last minute say ‘Well, I haven’t told you what I really want to tell you…’ She had a terrible phobia about sex.”

Although the ideal of the virgin bride pervaded in those days, more than half of those interviewed admitted to having had pre-marital sex.

Yet with only basic contraception such as washable condoms available, and widespread ignorance about sex in general, many women risked getting pregnant. Indeed, Little Kinsey revealed that in the 1940s, one in three pregnancies were conceived before marriage.

Men’s reluctance to use birth control - the Pill had not been invented - meant married women often feared their husbands, who saw sex as a marital right.

“My husband accused me of being cold, but he knew little of the passionate longing I felt,” said one of the anonymous respondents. “If only he’d made love to me instead of using me like a chamber pot.”

People could go on denying pre-marital sex existed, that men had homosexual experiences and went to prostitutes Dr Hera Cook on the suppression of Little Kinsey

The combination of such repressed attitudes and couples being forced into wedlock, led to many long, unhappy, or at the very least, “sufferable”, marriages.

Men and women resorted to adulterous affairs and men to prostitutes, with whom they could act out the sort of fantasies they could never tell their wives about.

Many men had become accustomed to using prostitutes during the war - one in four questioned admitted to having had sex with one.

“In some ways it’s a good thing,” said one interviewee, a married RAF pilot. “You get people who are not suited but can make a happy family apart from the matter of sex so he goes somewhere to satisfy his lust.”

Rose Hacker believes the stifling reticence about all things sexual meant “a great many men were impotent” in marriage.

They saw their wives as pure, but could have sex with a prostitute who would fit any bill they wanted to design for her, she says. “They could abuse her or they could have any kind of kinky sex or use bad language and that was the only way that they could be potent.”

Researchers tested women’s virtue by chatting them up at dances

The war too is thought to have contributed to the high number of homosexual experiences logged in the survey. One in five respondents - male and female - had had one, a higher number than today. This, at a time, when was both illegal and an utter taboo in most circles.

“I think that’s a terrible thing,” said one female interviewee, “really I can’t describe it, it makes me feel embarrassed to be near anyone, like that.”

Yet it was these sort of inhibitions that saw Little Kinsey’s findings mothballed before they could be published. Although the Sunday Pictoral, which helped finance it, ran a few pieces in the summer of 1949, the bulk of the findings were too shocking and dangerous to be made public.

The effect, says sexologist Dr Hera Cook, only perpetuated people’s discomfort about sex.

“That meant that people could go on denying pre-marital sex existed,” she says, “that men had homosexual experiences, that they went to prostitutes, that the old sexual morality was still intact when in fact it was crumbling all around them and a new modern sex world was emerging.”

Little Kinsey will be shown on BBC Four on Wednesday 5 October, at 2200 BST.

Why do people find this so surprising? I can see no reason to think that people in the 1940s would have different sexual desires to people today, or for example to people in medieval times, or to the ancient greeks.
Humans have not changed for many thousands of years and will not change for many thousands more.
James, London, UK

Nothing changes, in 1994 Margaret Thatcher’s government refused to fund the study “Sexual Behaviour in Britain, The National Survey of Sexual Attitudes & Lifestyles” because they didn’t like the results. This would have been suppressed had it not been for the Wellcome Foundation providing funds.
JP, London, England

My nan reguarly gets tipsy at christmas and proceeds to inform the entire family about all the american soldiers she ‘had’ during the war. As she puts it ‘Well I could have died the next day’.
Darren, UK

My Great Aunt, admited that the sight of the officers caps lined up on the table at the back of the church, when my brother got married remined her of what a good war she had. This comment made no sence until I read the books by Mary Wesly. Never again will I look at the women lined up in the post office collecting their pension in the same way!
Rachel, England

And they say that the country has been becoming more sex-obbsessed since the war. Yes, we do talk about sex a lot now, and regardless of what the Armerican neo-conservatives and religious right tell us, were probably all much happier and healthier as a result.
Arthur Plant, Greenock, UK

One of the most interesting experience of my adolescence was to listen to a conversation of few mothers. They were all in a ‘happy’ marriage, teaching their children about moral and about sex after marriage. And there they were, gathered in the hall of my building to collect the mail, and saying “if I had to go back, I will not marry. I will be a single mother.” I was really shocked and also pleasantly amused to see that all my friend’s mother married because pregnant.
Anna
Anna, Italy

I don’t find this surprising at all. Next we’ll be finding out that the general population likes to take drugs as well, and that it’s not restricted to some sort of underclass. Unless, of course, that gets swept under the carpet for 50 years.
Mark, Brit in Germany

This news is interesting but needs to be treated with circumspection. After all, despite the media’s hype around the American Kinsey report, it fails to meet modern standards for qualitative and quantitative statistical research, and reveals serious bias. Kinsey’s report has been fairly thoroughly discredited by decades of more recent research in similar fields, showing that his findings were exaggerated, inflated or fraudulent.
Jonathan, South Africa

So what’s changed since then? Most men still hide their homosexual experiences and their experiences with prostitutes. I’m secretly bisexual and the few times
I have visited a prostitute I had my most relaxed sex with a woman. My male partners are few and far between because of the stigma still attached to it by my friends.

anony, uk

It is always fascinating to see the chasm between popular perceptions and reality, especially when it comes to heavily emotive subjects like sex. As my grandmother often observed, “There’s nothing new under the sun.”
Kaz, Briton in NJ, USA

I think the british are still too hung up on sex and are very closed minded. Only this last year my son had a lesson at school (aged 13) and was told that pornography is responsible for rapes and similar sex crime. Luckily my son is more broadminded than his teachers and told us over dinner that evening. My wife, son and I have never laughed as much. The more serious side of this issue is that there are now children out there who are believing that they are somehow sexual perverts if they find films and magazines sexually stimulating. I wonder what their future holds. Are the British sexually suppressed - the answer is definitely yes. However we are getting better.

Greg, preston uk

Very interesting Yet another example of the establishment’s paranoia about publishing a document while the Americans did publish Kinsey. Has anything changed in the last 50 yrs?

jack, UK

Next they will be finding out that society used to drink to much then, there were ruthless violent crimes that there was not enough police to manage the crime so much of it went un reported, in fact the only thing thats really different to the “good old days” is that now society is much more honest about what really goes on so people can’t pretend it’s not perfect and never will be.
Les Ruddick, UK

Some of the comments are heartbreakingly sad. Relationships - platonic or sexual - are such an important part of our life. Thank goodness we are moving away from this, albeit slowly.
Janet, USA/Scotland

Interesting! Very interesting, I’ve always wondered about the old-fashioned attitudes towards sex and how Britain came to be sexually repressed for a while.
Clive, UK

I love this. Next time my Grandma says “Back in my day…” I will find it very hard not to bring it up. I’d love to but I fear the shock would kill her. But then according to this maybe she’s not as innocent as I think.
Richard, England

Thanks for your comments. The debate is now closed.

Full details would follow “within days”. In the meantime, bird fairs, markets and shows will be banned unless experts declare them safe.

Mrs Beckett said the H5N1 strain of bird flu which killed two parrots in UK quarantine probably came from Taiwan.

The EU has banned the import of live birds to limit the disease’s spread.

Risk assessment

The H5 strain was also identified in some of the 32 birds which died in UK quarantine before 16 October, Mrs Beckett told MPs in a Commons statement.

The release of birds from quarantine should now be subject to a case by case risk assessment, she said.

We are taking these developments very seriously but they are not in themselves a cause for undue alarm Margaret Beckett

The H5N1 strain has killed at least 60 people in Asia since 2003. It has been found in birds in Russia, Romania and Turkey.

The H5N1 virus, also known as avian flu, was discovered in wild swans found dead at a pond in eastern Croatia last week, the EU announced on Wednesday.

Health officials are attempting to stop the spread of bird flu.

People at risk at present are those who work closely with infected birds.

But there are fears bird flu could mutate into a form where it could be from human to human enabling it to spread more easily.

Anti-viral drugs

Mrs Beckett told MPs she planned to introduce “within the coming days, sensible and measured regulations, which will assist us in reducing the risk of disease and our ability to control an outbreak”.

A register of commercial poultry producers would be established, she said, and the possibility of keeping poultry indoors was being urgently discussed with the industry.

We do not want to see your department once again rendered impotent in the face of disaster and the army being brought in to clear up the mess Oliver Letwin

She said the parrots that died in UK quarantine had been culled and anti-viral drugs were given to staff who came into contact with them.

“The quarantine system is succeeding in providing the protection that it is in place to deliver,” she said. “That is not a reason for complacency.

“We are taking these developments very seriously but they are not in themselves a cause for undue alarm.

“Avian flu does not at present transmit easily to humans.”

‘Lax’ procedures?

But Mrs Beckett said while Britain’s disease-free status on avian flu remained unaffected, ministers and officials “must remain vigilant”.

About 15 of birds remained in quarantine, but their release would be looked at on a case by case basis, she added.

Shadow secretary Oliver Letwin welcomed government measures to combat the disease.

But he asked why Mrs Beckett and her ministers “strenuously resisted EU proposals to impose a ban on wild bird imports”.

He also questioned why quarantine procedures were “so lax that birds from different continents are kept together, test samples are pooled” and there was no clarity in her department about the implications of the tests.

Internet trade

Referring to the foot and mouth outbreak of 2001, he added: “We do not want to see your department once again rendered impotent in the face of disaster and the army being brought in to clear up the mess.”

But Mrs Beckett said the government had not resisted an EU ban on wild bird imports, adding that the question of the separation of birds was being considered.

Norman Baker, for the Liberal Democrats, said it was important to strike a balance between adopting sensible precautions while not alarming the public or damaging the farming industry unnecessarily.

He urged Mrs Beckett to confirm that there was no greater threat from eating poultry now than there had ever been, despite reports from the European Food Safety Agency about the risks of eating undercooked chicken and raw eggs.

MP Brinda Karat said she was basing her allegations on a report by a of the health ministry.

Ms Karat said she had collected two samples of medicines produced by Swami Ramdev’s pharmacy and sent them to the ministry six months ago.

Swami Ramdev denies the allegations, saying they are part of a conspiracy.

‘Framed’

The guru hosts a yoga show on Indian television that is said to attract hundreds of thousands of viewers.

His pharmacy, based in the northern town of Haridwar, stocks herbal medicines that, it is claimed, treat conditions ranging from epilepsy to cancer to impotency.

medicine is popular in India

“The impotency drug contains testicles of animals, crushed to powder. Human bone and skull powder was also detected,” Ms Karat told journalists in Delhi.

“Using the popularity of television channels, he is selling drugs which are adulterated. This is a huge breach of trust to his followers.”

Brinda Karat is a member of India’s main leftist party, the Communist Party of India (Marxist).

A spokesperson for the health ministry confirmed a laboratory had carried out the tests.

“Tests have been done and the report made available to the government where Haridwar is located,” he told the Hindustan Times newspaper.

Swami Ramdev has dismissed the allegations, describing them as a conspiracy.

He said he was being framed by international companies who were opposed to his indigenous medicines.

“What is the proof that the samples on the basis of which these allegations are being made were of the medicines we make?” he asked journalists in the northern city of Lucknow.

He also said the samples could have been doctored.

When I first arrived in Paris after three years in Moscow, a Russian friend joked that France was the only truly successful communist country in the world.

At the time, I put that down to Russian humour.

How could a nation that gave the world joys such as champagne, or more than 200 different types of cheese, possibly be communist?

These days, though, I’m not so sure my Russian friend was joking.

Perhaps he had had a sneak preview of a recent survey, in which various countries were asked how they rated capitalism.

Three quarters of the Chinese said it was the best economic system for the future. But in France only a third of people agreed.

That came back to me earlier this week as I walked alongside the French strikers.

Impotent rage

Beneath the cherry trees just coming into bloom, they marched through Paris, the red of the trade unions’ balloons silhouetted against a cloudless spring sky.

French companies buy up foreign firms with gusto but woe betide the foreigner who tries a takeover in France

The focus of their anger was the government’s latest attempt to create the more flexible labour market French employers say they need to create new jobs.

Official figures suggest a quarter of the under 26s are without work.

Yet in reality, the anger was more diffuse - the jobs law being a focus for a kind of impotent rage against a globalised world and fears over France’s place in it.

Once the French bestrode the planet like a Colossus, exporting everything from their language to their culture.

France may have lost an empire, but in the 60s, 70s and 80s - those glorious decades here - she was once again the envy of the world.

This was a nation of grand government projects: from its prowess to the languid delights of French cinema, from the thrill of the high-speed TGV to the charms of the equally racy Brigitte Bardot.

France had sophistication and fabulous food and wine, while all Britain could offer in the 70s was tinned Spam and mushy peas.

1970s Britain

Yet as I walked alongside the strikers, I felt a weird sense of deja vu - as if in one nostalgic bound I was transported back to the Britain of the 1970s.

Margaret Thatcher’s promise to take on the unions helped her win power

My mother cooking by candlelight on a Calor gas stove.

Britain on a three-day week.

No electricity because the energy workers were on strike again. The shelves in the local shop yawned white and bare. No sugar and no bread - thanks to panic buying.

Not long afterwards, a prime minister called Margaret Thatcher took on the trade unions and changed Britain and its attitudes forever.

Here in France, a centre-right government has talked of reform but it has backed down again every time.

Perhaps France has not reached rock bottom as Britain had. The cafes here still brim with fresh baguettes and bottles of Bordeaux.

Few want a French Margaret Thatcher.

Seeking a French alternative

Instead, there’s a desperate hope that France can find a different way, a better way than the bumpy Anglo-Saxon path.

Time and time again, the French insist that capitalism as practised abroad simply does not work for France.

Yet big French companies might disagree.

From firms such as L’Oreal - which recently bought the Body Shop - to its international banks, French companies are all playing the Anglo-Saxon game.

Yet a journalist from Le Monde newspaper tells me France should follow the Scandinavian model, not that of the US, with its stark differences between the ghetto and the .

Nor the British model, where NHS dentists are a folk memory, like leprechauns - you hear talk of them but few believe they exist.

Social exclusion

But even under the French model of today, I already see so many inequalities.

Just look at the suburbs, the banlieues.

The French government imposed a state of emergency in November

Is it an equitable system that excludes up to 40% of people there from the world of work, offering them handouts for life instead?

The ghettoes already exist in France, even if their inhabitants have access to free health care and a decent dentist.

The riots here last November were a howl of despair from those excluded from the mainstream by virtue of being born poor or different, with a black face or a Muslim name.

This year it is France’s middle class young who are in revolt, the marches their own scream of angst, as their hopes of the comfortable life their parents enjoyed slowly fade.

For all its talk of equality, fraternity and liberty, France in this troubled springtime feels like a society at war with itself, suffering a deep and growing divide between its citizens.

A divide between the public and the private sector, between politicians and the people, between those in work and those without.

And the greatest gulf of all: between those who look into the future and see only fear and those who believe and hope that France can change.

From Our Own Correspondent was broadcast on Saturday, 8 April, 2006 at 1030 GMT / 1130 BST on BBC Radio 4. Please check the programme schedules for World Service times.

UN chief Jan Egeland said children, elderly and disabled had been left stranded by two weeks of fighting.

US President George W Bush has again dismissed calls for an immediate truce, arguing instead for an force to be deployed in Lebanon.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice returns to the region on Saturday.

President Bush said he would “work with the leaders of Israel and Lebanon to seize this opportunity to achieve lasting peace and stability for both of their countries”.

Ms Rice is expected to lobby for a UN Security Council resolution that would lead to an international force being deployed in southern Lebanon.

Troop contributions

UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, who met Mr Bush in Washington on Friday, said world leaders would discuss the deployment of a ” force” in Lebanon at a meeting at the UN in New York on Monday.

Mid-East crisis map Strategy debate grows In pictures: Lebanon crisis

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said countries who may be in a position to contribute troops to an international force would attend Monday’s meeting.

“Obviously it will be discussions because we do not have the mandate of the Security Council yet,” Mr Annan said.

The UN Security Council is due to discuss the issue later next week.

Mr Bush said the US and UK will push for a “Chapter Seven resolution setting out a clear framework for cessation of hostilities on an urgent basis and mandating the multinational force”.

UN ‘not impotent’

Briefing the Security Council on Friday, Mr Egeland said some 600 people had been killed by Israeli action in Lebanon, of which around a third were children.

HAVE YOUR SAY Surely the lives of the innocent should take precedent Nikki, Warwickshire Send us your views

“It’s been horrific… There is something fundamentally wrong with the war, where there are more dead children than armed men,” Mr Egeland said.

He said he would ask the parties involved in the conflict “for at least a 72-hour start of this cessation of hostilities so that we can evacuate the wounded, children, the elderly, the disabled from the crossfire in southern Lebanon”.

He said existing humanitarian corridors were not adequate to meet the immense needs of people in the war zone.

Mr Egeland was speaking after completing a visit to Lebanon, Israel and the Gaza Strip.

The UN’s Deputy Secretary General has denied the world body feels powerless after the loss of four peacekeepers to Israeli fire in Lebanon this week.

Mark Malloch-Brown told the BBC the UN felt “concerned and frustrated, but not impotent”.

The UN Security Council issued a statement on Thursday voicing “shock and distress” at the deaths, after the US blocked calls for harsher criticism of Israel.

Critical needs

Israeli army chief Dan Halutz said Israel has killed 26 Hezbollah fighters in Bint Jbeil in southern Lebanon, inflicting “enormous” damage on the Shia militia.

A convoy carrying a TV crew and refugees was hit on Friday

Ten civilians, including a Jordanian, also reportedly died in Israeli attacks in south Lebanon on Friday.

Earlier, Hezbollah said it had fired a new long-range rocket, called the Khaibar-1, into northern Israel.

Also on Friday, two mortar rounds hit a convoy of vehicles evacuating civilians from the village of Rmeish, close to the Israeli border. Two people travelling in a German TV car were wounded.

Refugees from Rmeish said conditions were deteriorating rapidly in the area.

They said some of those still trapped in the village were drinking water from a stagnant pond.

A senior official at the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) in Lebanon told the BBC that supplies were “running out very, very fast” in southern Lebanon.

“The south is definitely where the critical needs are at the moment. You’ve got active combat going on, several tens if not hundreds of thousands of persons displaced within the south,” Arafat Jamal said.

Aid agencies also said that many people in the area were in urgent need of medical treatment.

The All Blacks made a mockery of the game’s billing as a contest between the two top Test countries by romping to a seven-try victory.

“We played very well,” he said. “We’re enormously proud of the players.

“This win has given the guys confidence and it’s a for the World Cup. Hopefully we’ll get stronger.”

New Zealand’s comprehensive win over the World Cup hosts in Lyon underlined their status as tournament favourites for next year.

Henry made 10 changes to the side that defeated England last weekend and the former Wales coach said the form of his players had created a nice selection headache.

We were completely impotent France coach Bernard Laporte

“There’s a lot of competition for places and that’s a very positive thing,” Henry said.

“It’s a good problem to have and selection’s not going to be easy.

“It’s now up to the selectors to do their job. It’s a very sign going forward.

“We could play any number of players in the squad of 22. We’ve got a group of 32 players and any of them could play. Everybody’s put their hand up.”

606 DEBATE: Can New Zealand win the World Cup?

And Henry said it was fitting that the came on Armistice Day as he referred to the sacrifices made by New Zealand’s war dead.

“Our players showed a lot of courage and backbone,” added Henry.

“They weren’t only playing for the All Blacks but a lot of people who sacrificed so much.

“There was a huge amount of to play well.”

The Lyon crown roundly jeered and whistled the France team

New Zealand now travel to Paris for the second Test against France next weekend and skipper Richie McCaw says Les Bleus should not be taken lightly.

“The French will be hurting,” said the open-side flanker. “They will have new motivation to come back and perform next week.

“For us we have to get back to preparing to play like we did in Lyon.”

France coach Bernard Laporte was scathing of his side’s display, which led to the players being jeered from the pitch.

“We were completely impotent,” he said. “We weren’t able to react in any way and we feel very inferior.

“There is a huge gap between us and them. We have to work hard and be more come Saturday.

“We will try to become true rivals. It’s true we thought we’d be more competitive than that.

“The French players have worked well but the All Blacks are stronger. They run 100m in 10 seconds, us in 12 seconds. They are superior athletically and are quick with the ball.

“But we also made life very easy for them and didn’t get into the game enough ourselves.”

Gustav’s owner says that for six months after the 2005 attack the bird lost his lust for life, had no interest in sex and was depressed and apathetic.

In usual , the owner says, he would have fathered chicks worth 5,000 euros (3,400) in that period.

The boys admit harassing the bird but say they only threw pebbles. Court talks have failed to settle the row.

Gustav’s owner - in the eastern town of Bautzen - rejected a package in which the accused would pay a vet bill of 140 euros and also work for 40 hours on the ostrich farm.

He demanded that the two work 100 hours each on the land, but the boys dismissed his plan as “fantasy”.

Following the failure to agree a settlement, the judge is trying to find an expert who can evaluate the state of the bird. The evaluation will be at a further court hearing.

The ostrich hens have been laying eggs since the middle of last year, suggesting Gustav’s capabilities have been restored.

Alethea Foster, 61, told Cambridge Crown Court that in her misery she felt unloved, unwanted and “raw inside”.

The prosecution claims Mrs Foster tried to kill Julie Simpson, 45, after finding emails written by her husband.

Mrs Foster told the court her husband of 35 years had lied to her and was “, secretive and boring”.

Miss Simpson, a mature student from Beckenham, south London, was stabbed 17 times in the hall of her Cambridge college in October 2005.

Mrs Foster, a retired foot , told the court on Friday she and her husband had not had sex for 15 years - he had told her that he was impotent and there was no treatment.

Mrs Foster stabbed Julie Simpson 17 times

“I found it a hard thing to have a sexless marriage and I was so sorry for him,” she told the court.

She said she could not believe her husband, a former political journalist with the BBC, would have sex with another woman after telling her he was impotent.

When she voiced her suspicions that he was having an affair with Miss Simpson - a family friend - she said he had always fobbed her off and gave the impression she was being unreasonable.

Mrs Foster, who also denies causing grievous bodily harm with intent, said she had not intended to attack Miss Simpson - also a former BBC journalist - but meant to kill herself in the student’s room.

The prosecution said Mrs Foster took a kitchen knife from her home which she used to attack Miss Simpson.

The court has heard Miss Simpson was blinded in one eye in the attack.

The trial continues.

Inspections carried out by the health department found five products containing Sildenafil, one of the main ingredients of Viagra.

The adulterated items had names like Dragon Power and King 100% Natural Male Tonic.

Dr Mike Mawhinney, who carried out the inspections, said anyone concerned should contact their GP or pharmacist.

He said drugs like Viagra “should only be given on “.

“The department would advise them to… bring the product along with them, explain that they have taken them, explain that they have learned that they may be adulterated,” he said.

“Their GP or pharmacist will know what to do.”

Traditional medicines have been used for centuries

At the moment there is nothing to prevent anyone setting up a Chinese medicine shop, so reputable s are calling for the profession to be regulated.

Dr Rifang How, a member of the British Register of Chinese Medicines, said that until there was regulation, patients should check that their practitioner is suitably qualified.

“For patients, it is very essential to go the qualified practitioner and after having a full consultation, get the herbs or products from approved suppliers,” she said.

“Patients should be very confident with all the products they have got and confident with the service they have got.”

‘Element of emotion’

However, Dr Hugh McGavock, a , is against people taking any kind of herbal medicine.

“They are impure, they are unstandardised - you can’t be sure of the dosage from one batch to the next, they have multiple plant chemicals in them,” he said.

“They are not just pure, natural substances and they mostly have a very, very low…. effectiveness. So you are actually paying to get almost nothing.

“There is a huge element of emotion in this. It’s what doctors call the placebo effect. All medicines, if given with enough enthusiasm will do you good, even if there’s almost nothing in them.

“”My general advice would be if you want magic, go to a magician. If you want medicine go to a doctor or a pharmacist.”

BBC Northern Ireland health correspondent Dot Kirby said: “Chinese medicine has been around for 2,000 years.

“Now unscrupulous practitioners are tarnishing its reputation. The regulation of the components of herbal medicines is already tightening.

“Some hope that the regulation of the actual practitioners is not far behind.”