If symptoms

persist. . .

THE ORIGINS of science are lost in antiquity. Some argue that the forerun- ners of today's Nobel prize-winners were Mesopotamian necromancers; of this theory I am not qualified to speak. Suf- fice it to say that all of us in our daily lives put forward hypotheses which are falsifiable by observation — the very touchstone of science, according to the late Sir Karl Popper. Yes, we are all sci- entists in our own way.

Take, for example, the lady whom I saw last week who had developed a theo- ry which was entirely falsifiable. She had given birth to her fourth child about five months previously.

`I was really proud, doctor,' she said, `because I'd gone through pregnancy all on my own, without a man.'

She wasn't claiming immaculate con- ception, of course; only that she had booted out the paternal parent of her forthcoming offspring as soon as she learnt that she was pregnant again.

He was the father of all her children, and she had ended her affair with him because he was very violent towards her. He had punched and strangled her in what I now know to be the usual marital fashion, and had tried to abort her first two children by kicking her in the stom- ach. After her common-law divorce, she had thrown herself and her children upon the cold mercy of the state.

`I hope you don't mind me asking,' I said, 'but why did you have four children by such a man?'

`You don't understand, do you, doc- tor?'

`No, I'm afraid I don't. I'm trying, but I still don't.'

`I loved him. He wasn't like that all the time.'

`Could a man be like that all the time?' I asked. 'Even the worst imagin- able?'

`No, I suppose not.'

`After all, even Frederick West wasn't killing people all the time.'

`No, doctor.'

Was he violent towards you straight away?'

`No, not straight away. Only after we started to live together.'

`But before you had your first child?' `Yes.'

Tut you still had children with him?' `I thought he would change.'

And that was her grand hypothesis, refuted a thousand times since. Hypothe- sise in haste, falsify at leisure.

My next patient, as it happened, had discovered relativity theory. He had taken rat poison because of what he called the pressures. The week before he had slashed his wrists. Next time, he said, it would be hanging — though he wanted to leave hospital as soon as possible because United were playing at home that evening.

`What pressures?' I asked.

`I lost my job last week.'

`Why?' I asked.

`Time-keeping.'

`You mean, not time-keeping?'

`Well, yeah. Then there's my wife.'

`What's wrong?'

`She's about to drop.'

`Drop what?'

`Drop a baby.'

`Drop a baby?'

`Give birth, like. And we've already got two nippers.'

He had pub-crawler's nose — some- what out of true — and a scar on his forehead. I suspected that the police might be adding to the pressures.

`Yeah, I got a case next week.'

`What is it?'

`ABH. I might go down.'

`What happened?'

`Well, this geezer was mouthing off and I got pissed off with him so I hit him. They say I broke his nose, but it wasn't me, it was the pavement.'

The pavement came up to meet his nose in the same proportion as his nose went down to meet the pavement: that's relativity theory for you.

Theodore Dalrymple