If symptoms

persist.. .

I WAS called away from a crisis meeting last week to the casualty department. I was glad of the interruption, I must admit: there is a certain natural limit to one's interest in the question of new mattresses for the beds in the junior doc- tors' on-call rooms. Of course, I under- stand the importance of the matter, sleep being the knitter-up of the ravell'd sleave of care, sore labour's bath, and all that. But when there's no money, there's no money, and talking about it won't help. And so, like Macbeth, methought I heard a voice cry, `Sleep no more! The Budget murders sleep.'

Meanwhile, down in casualty a young lady in a red bandana was spraying everyone in sight with shaving foam. She had bought it, apparently, as protection from the demons which she had recently taken to seeing and hearing everywhere, rather as nervous ladies in violent cities carry tear-gas around in their handbags.

Everyone had retired to a safe dis- tance and it was clearly time for a little leadership, exercised by me. I strode for- ward.

`Hello,' I said cheerfully. 'I'm Doctor Dalrymple.'

She pointed her aerosol at me (ozone friendly, I are glad to say) and applied her finger to the button. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but foam will never hurt me. I continued my approach.

She punched me hard on the nose and slapped my face. I think she may have reactivated an old fracture, from the time I crashed into a wall during a furi- ous drive to reach a restaurant before it closed.

I had my revenge, however: I ordered her to be held down and injected in the buttock.

I was called to the ward, where anoth- er patient awaited me. He was multiply tattooed with symbols of whose meaning and significance he was as perfectly unaware as is the writer of any post- modernist novel of the meaning of the symbols he uses. When I looked at the patient, I could not but think of news- reels of bygone wars: all those patriotic women lining up to donate their rings to the war effort. I pictured my patient — if ever we go to war again — removing the rings from his eyebrows, the upper parts of his ears and his nipples, to help the boys at the front: there were enough of them to pay for an entire campaign, I should have thought.

`What's the problem?' I asked.

`Why do you ask?' he replied. 'What fucker gives a shit?'

`Has it ever occurred to you,' I asked, `that no one cares because of the way you talk to him?'

`If you'd been through what I've been through . . . ' he said.

`Even so,' I said, 'politeness pays.'

`I can't help it.'

I told him that I would continue to see him only on condition that he did not swear or use foul language.

`I'm sorry, doctor,' he said. 'It's just the way I was brought up.'

My plan is to demonstrate to him that, notwithstanding his upbringing, he can control his language; and if he can con- trol that, perhaps he can control other things. Of course, my plan may not work, but if it doesn't — well, to quote my patient, what fucker gives a shit?

Theodore Dalrymple