If symptoms

persist. . .

COMPARED with the depravity by which our hospital is surrounded, all other depravity — the licentiousness of Sodom and Gomorrah, the decadence of Weimar Germany, the concupiscence of Tiberius Caesar — is but the decorum of Tunbridge Wells.

I was moved to these comparisons by the non-appearance at work one morn- ing last week of one of our ward doctors. She had been mugged the day before in the hospital carpark, and was badly shak- en. She had gone to her car and had noticed a couple of youths peacefully removing a radio from another vehicle.

Quick as a flash, they sized up the situ- ation and, seeing that she was small and defenceless and carried a handbag and that there was no one around to witness anything that they might do, rushed over to her, threw her to the ground and grabbed her bag. They could finish off the radio job later.

This doctor has had a run of bad luck, as it happens. A couple of months ago, she turned the corner in a hospital corridor and slipped and fell on some vomitus recently deposited on the floor by a drunk. Apart from the sheer indignity of it and the repulsiveness of the experience, she had hurt her back and was badly bruised.

And a few months before that she had been attacked as she parked her car near a restaurant, where the staff from the ward were holding dinner. As she stopped her car by the kerb, a brick was thrown through the window, the door opened, and she was pulled out and thrown on to the ground, her neck- lace ripped off and her bag snatched.

She is a kindly, inoffensive person, and so it must have seemed to her as if the world had lost its natural order and was intent upon returning evil for good. Of course, there was no question of catching the culprits, or even of trying to do so.

Another of our doctors was robbed on her way to work last week: she pulled up in her car at some traffic lights, the pas- senger door was wrenched open and her handbag snatched. She managed to grab hold of it and a tussle ensued, which in the end she lost.

Not surprisingly, the ward staff sat in the office and discussed the problem of crime. Of the three nurses present, one had been mugged recently on the bus, and another's house had been burgled. She had left for work dressed, for once, in her uniform — normally she changed at the hospital. As luck had had it, there was a youth loitering outside her house, who saw her depart and made the most of the opportunity. Who says entrepreneurship does not flourish in England?

We all agreed that the situation unlike the latest crime statistics — was not a joke. But what should be done about it? The ward sages agreed that there was no point in excessive leniency.

`We should be like Saudi,' said Sister. `Just amputate their hands. They wouldn't do it again.'

`Waste of anaesthetic,' muttered another nurse.

`Who said anything about an anaes- thetic?' asked Sister.

`Nurse, nurse!' The voice of an elderly patient penetrated into the ward office. `Can I have a glass of water, please?'

`Yes, of course, dear,' said Sister. 'Just coming.'

Theodore Dalrymple