When I got to the age to go to senior school my parents decided that I should go to a small private residential one. Entrance involved taking written exams, a long interview and a detailed medical examination all conducted at the school and during the normal school holidays.
There were two others at the time looking for entry and we all took our written exams on the same day. We stayed for all the tests over a few days and on the third day I was interviewed and then told to report to the gym changing room with the shorts and gym shoes we had been told to bring with us. In those days all shorts were very short and normally white. Mine were no exception. I did as I was told and waited. After a few minutes the doctor, who was about 50 and with a slight military appearance came out of a room off the changing room wearing a white coat. He told me to change into my shorts with no underwear and when I was ready to follow him into the gym. It took me a few minutes to change and I went into the gym feeling very apprehensive.
He was waiting for me at a small desk with a stethoscope around his neck and a blood pressure sleeve and gauge on the desk. He told me that I would be carrying out some physical exercises and he would be listening to my heart, taking my pulse and my BP after. The gym was not large but I felt really small and vulnerable being the only person there with the doctor. He put me through about half an hour's exercises - eg pressups, jumping up and down, running up and down and on the spot, duck walk, hanging from a beam and lifting and lowering my legs while observing me and in between some of the exercises he took BP, pulse rate and listened to my chest and back with the stethoscope.
He then asked me to follow him back to the room off the changing room which turned out to be a sort of first aid/medical room. I followed him in and saw that there was a desk chairs, a couple of cabinets, an examination couch and an upright set of scales with a height gauge over.
He had my forms which I had filled out in a file on his desk at which he had sat and he just ran through a few of the questions again. Then he told me to take off my gym shoes and slip my shorts right off and put them on one of the chairs. What I had been anticipating had now actually happened and I was naked in front of the doctor who, although he was a doctor was still a complete stranger in a very unfamiliar place unlike the medicals we had had at school.
I stood in front of the desk with my arms by my side feeling quite nervous and embarrassed. He could see that I was shivering slightly and told me firmly to relax and go over and stand on the scales. He weighed me and then brought the measure down on my head and took my height. He went back to the desk and noted these details down having told me to go over to the couch. When he came over he inspected my hair, ears and eyes with a torch and used a wooden spatula to examine my mouth and tongue. He examined the glands in my neck and the muscles in my neck, shoulders and arms. He told me to cross my legs in turn and he checked the reflexes in each knee and across the soles of my feet. I had to lie on my back on the couch while he palpated by stomach and abdomen and then tapped my chest with his fingers and then listened again with the stethoscope. I had then to turn over and he tapped my back and again used the stethoscope. This all had taken maybe 15 minutes. He felt the muscles in my legs, both lower and upper and then told me to turn over onto my back and he tested the leg muscles again. He told me to hop off the couch and walk away from him across the room, turn and walk back - I had to do this twice. I finished up by the couch again and he told me to stand facing him with my feet at shoulder width He took about three or four minutes feeling my scrotum and testicles then told me to stand sideways on to him while he placed his fingers on my lower abdomen and told me to cough twice, this he repeated on the other side of my abdomen to check for hernias. I then had to face him while he sat on a chair and he took my penis between his fingers and gently opened the end and inspected it again with a torch.
He told me to go and wait by the couch again while he spent some minutes making some notes. When he came back over he was carrying a sample bottle and he said he wnted me to provide a sample and he needed to watch the flow; this was really embarrassing but I managed to do as I was asked and gave him back the bottle which he capped and put on his desk. He seemed satisfied and told me to get on the couch on my hands and knees with my legs a couple of feet apart. I don't think I could have got any more embarrassed having been naked for the whole of the past hour or so and I wondered what next? It was a relief, just a visual inspection - he put a hand each side and just opened me enough to see there were no infections or anything untoward around my anus and the rear of my scrotum.
He told me to hop off the couch again (that expression has remained a really emotive one)and told me that I could collect my shoes and shorts and go back into the changing room and dress and report back to the school office. I went to put on my shoes and shorts and he just told me that I should just take them into the changing room as my clothes were there. I left his room and was heading back to where my clothes were hanging when one of the other two candidates came in carrying shorts and gym shoes ready to change as I had done. Of course he saw me undressed looked worried and wanted to know what was going to happen. I gave him a summary while I was dressing, at least he would know what to expect. I often think about these events and in the end my parents decided not to send me away to school after all and I eventually went to a local grammar.