12 JULY 1986, Page 22

THE NAKED LADY OF HACKNEY

get rapid treatment on the NHS for your hernia

IT IS a great source of comfort to every Briton to know that if knocked over in the street he will, unlike an American, receive the best available medical attention regard- less of his financial position.

It is somewhat less comforting to know that, whether through the operation of some ineluctable law of hospital adminis- tration or a conspiracy of surgeons to drum up private practice, he may well have to wait several years for an operation on a hernia. He is unlikely to die of a hernia; but he is quite likely to die with one.

There is, however, a solution to this problem for the enterprising (or desperate) patient.

I discovered it while working some years ago at a small lunatic asylum in the East End of London. I was walking through the grounds one evening, thinking of where to go for dinner, when I noticed a patient sitting on a bench with his hands dripping with blood. He was a young psychopath (suffering, if that is the word, from what was once called 'moral insanity'), well- known to several hospitals for his numer- ous gestures in the direction of suicide 19 up till then. He had drunk a bottle of vodka and used the jagged ends of the smashed bottle to slash his wrists.

I approached him and asked him to come with me into the hospital, where I should patch up his cuts. He refused and began to wave the bottle in my face. Unwilling to risk mutilation in so worthless a cause, I went for help. By the time I returned with a porter, the patient had climbed up the fire escape on to the roof, 60 feet above the ground. He was swaying drunkenly on a narrow ledge, hanging on by one hand to some railings.

The porter and I rushed up the fire escape. When we gained the roof the patient threatened to jump if we came any closer. Nevertheless, we went forward and, just as we reached him, he did jump. We managed, however, to grab his arms through the railings and we held him suspended 60 feet above the ground. We were not strong enough to haul him up and the people below watching the episode were so startled that they rendered no assistance. (They were probably waiting

for the action replay and the panel of experts.) After a few seconds that seemed very much longer, we felt him begin to slip from our grasp.

`Let me go, you bastards,' he shouted; and then, 'Help, I'm falling!'

Just then the police arrived. They were bringing a lady for admission to hospital who, obviously mad, had undressed in the streets of Hackney. The police abandoned their naked lady at once and rushed to our aid. With no thought of danger to them- selves, the heroic boys in blue climbed on to the narrow ledge and pulled the psycho- path to safety, who might have plunged them both to their deaths below had he struggled. I need hardly add that his gratitude for having been thus saved was not demonstrative.

Now the true moral of this story does not concern the psychopath, despite his contra- dictory exclamations that seemed to me so perfectly to encapsulate our attitude to the Welfare State. It is to the fate of the naked lady that we must turn for real instruction.

For not only was she mad, but she suffered also from a skin complaint which, while not dangerous, was disfiguring. Her madness, I am glad to say, remitted quick- ly; and while in hospital she was referred directly to a consultant dermatologist who otherwise would not have been able to see her for at least six months, such was the pressure of work.

I come now to my recommendations to all those suffering from a chronic disease amenable to treatment who do not wish to pay for it but are unwilling also to wait months or years. Go to Hackney, where the police are familiar with and even sympathetic to such behaviour, strip naked It's the hard-back limp-prose edition.' in a frequented street while screaming some absurd slogan like 'I am the Angel of the Lord' or 'Sir Geoffrey Howe for Prime Minister'. You will at once be taken to a lunatic asylum where, of course, you must immediately recover your sanity. Mention to the admitting doctor your chronic but amenable condition, and within a day or two you will have seen the appropriate specialist.

Of course, like all enterprising courses of action, this one entails risks. You may be taken for a real lunatic and subjected to various unpleasant treatments; or you may be charged with indecent exposure. But do not lose heart: after a second or third offence you will probably be sent to prison and even there, I understand, it doesn't take long for a hernia to be operated on.