f)i- ) ] I.] Di _I

THEODORE DALRYMPLE

What a fine and delicate, yet powerful instrument is the human mind! You fill it with information, and out comes the sheerest error! There is no conclusion so obvious that the human mind cannot resist it, or truth so self-evident that it cannot deny it. The human mind sets experience at naught and treats evidence as an atheist treats God: that is to say, as non-existent. Yes, compared with the human mind the average miracle is but a party trick.

Thus it is that Mr M, who is in possession of one of these instruments, to wit a human mind, continues to attend our emergency department at least three nights a week, under the impression that he is imminently dying. No amount of experience teaches him otherwise: though of course if he persisN long enough, one day he will be right. Then, human beings being what they are, he will say, 'I told you so.' In the meantime, the despairing staff have tried everything from tepid tea to hatchet-faced hostility; but nothing works. I think Mr M must be in the grip of two lines from John Donne:

And can there be worse sickness, than to know That we are never well, nor can be so?

A nurse called me from the emergency department last week.

'He's here again.' she said, on the verge of hysteria. 'What can we do?'

'I'll write to his doctor,' I said. 'Perhaps he'll think of something. Can you send me a copy of his notes?'

'No,' said the nurse, but without a tone of insubordination.

'Why not?' I asked.

'Because a patient pissed into our photocopier this morning and it exploded.'

As it happened, the great urinator was in our ward, fighting off the hallucinatory demons that were attacking him because he'd omitted to drink his habitual six litres of 8.4 per cent industrial cider the day before. At the moment, he existed in two states: unconscious and violent.

In the bed opposite was a man with a large gold earring and an even larger beer belly, naked to what I suppose I must call his waist, though equator would be more accurate. He had tried to hang himself earlier in the day, but the asphyxiating pyjama cord had snapped under the weight and left him in a heap in the lavatory. In the meantime, he decided that he wanted to live after all. What changed his mind? The arrival of his girlfriend, who herself had just been discharged from another hospital after slashing her wrists. This, I suppose, is Romeo and Juliet with the deaths removed.

Though by no means slender, she climbed on to his bed and started a long, lingering kiss full on the mouth, The happy couple might have gone much further had one of our nurses not intervened.

'Excuse me,' she said. 'This is not the place. There's a man over there already hallucinating.'

It is curious how many visitors under the age of 40 think the hospital is running some kind of bed-by-the-hour service. I went over to the man.

'Would you try again to kill yourself?' I asked.

'I might,' he replied.

'But would you?'

'I don't know,' he said. 'You're the doctor.'

'But how can I know?'

'Because you're responsible for my mental well-being.'

'No I'm not.'

'Yes you are.' he said, 'If I kill myself, it's down to you.'