If symptoms persist. . .

I TAKE IT as axiomatic that all men want to be free: free, that is, of the con- sequences of their own actions. When things go well, they praise themselves; when they go badly, they call a doctor. The function of the doctor is to furnish excuses, whether to wives or to courts.

I saw a notable miscreant in the prison last week. In the old days, absence of mind led to the creation of the British Empire; nowadays, it leads to indecent assault. Naturally, the man in question, remanded on such a charge, remem- bered nothing, having been drunk at the material time, but his amnesia did not prevent him from strenuously asserting his innocence.

His solicitor asked me to examine him because he had behaved so consistently badly since youth that his delinquency amounted to prima facie evidence that there was something wrong with him. It is not normal, said the solicitor, for a boy of nine to set fire to cats after dousing them with kerosene, or dissolve live goldfish in sulphuric acid; to which I can only add, 'What sheltered lives our lawyers lead!'

The young criminal (or victim of cir- cumstance, according to one's philosoph- ical taste) was called into the white-tiled consulting room by an old warder, whose view of humanity had been somewhat darkened by a life of contact with the utmost villainy. I knew him of old: he believed that prisoners, being wicked, were immune to every disease and injury, and that, in a prisoner, death itself was but the highest form of malin- gering.

I find my own cynicism witty and sophisticated; but in others I find it cal- lous and brutal.

'There must be something wrong with me, doctor,' said the young man who had the usual scars on his face and tattoos on his neck.

'Why's that?' I asked.

'Well, I keep doing these things what I don't mean to.'

'Such as?'

'Well, I keep losin' it like, and it's doin' me 'ead in.'

This was psychobabble a la underclass. 'You couldn't be a little more specific, could you?' I asked.

He could. Whenever he and his wife ('common-law, like,' he added) quar- relled, his mind suddenly went blank and he hit her. Sometimes he would grab her

by the hair and bash her head against the wall. After several years of such treat- ment, she had decided to leave him.

'It's doin' me 'ead in, doctor, I can't take no more.'

At the end of my consultation, I told him there was nothing I could do for him.

'Are you saying there's nothing wrong with me?' he asked angrily.

'No, I'm saying there's nothing I can do for you.'

'Well, there's only one thing left for me to do, then,' he said.

He meant suicide, of course; and he thought the prospect of an appearance in the coroner's court was so terrifying to me that I would write him an exculpatory report.

'Anything I do from now on, doctor, it's on your 'ead.'

'No, it isn't,' I said firmly.

On my way out of the prison, I noticed a magnificent black dog held on a short leash by a warder, to discourage prison- ers from seeking freedom from the con- sequences of their own actions.

'Is your dog friendly?' I asked, stroking him.

'Put it like this, sir,' said the warder. 'If this dog was 'uman, 'e'd be in Broad-

moor.' Theodore Dalrymple