29 FEBRUARY 1952, Page 5

Having retired for a brief period to hospital for a

not very formidable operation for a not very serious disability I have discovered what an astonishing addiction modern medicine has to punctures. I have been pricked in every available part of my person—pricked for the injection of iodine, pricked that the house-surgeon may draw a little blood to amuse himself with, pricked a second time for the same purpose, pricked for some unspecified injection an hour before going to the theatre, pricked at the last moment for the injection of that blessed pentothal, and now pricked every six hours for penicillin. (By some aberration they have forgotten anti-tetanus.) It all widens one's experience of life. I know now exactly what a pin- cushion feels like—or St. Sebastian.