If symptoms
persist. . .
AS EVERYONE knows, it is easier to change a name than transform an object, let alone reverse an undesirable social trend (and all social trends, it goes with- out saying, are undesirable). To change a name gives an illusion of activity, and therefore it is not surprising that hospital managers these days cannot leave names and titles alone, but must forever be changing them.
The names of our wards were altered last week from cold and impersonal let- ters and numbers (S5, for instance) to names of trees, such as Beech and Elm. The latter is the neurosurgery ward, and is the nearest anyone from our area will ever get to such a tree, the need for neu- rosurgery after mugging being inexorably on the rise (a perfect instance of a social trend).
As a result of the name changes, no one can find the ward he is looking for, and occasionally one finds glassy-eyed men in the corridors distractedly mutter- ing, `133! B3!' Some people tell them that B3 is now Larch, while others say it is Oak, or possibly Cypress. I expect any day now to meet someone unravelling a ball of string behind him in the corridor while on search for his sick relative. The managers maintain that the change of names was made for the sake of efficiency. Someone had complained that he had misheard D6 for E6 over the phone, and so the managers, acting with commendable dispatch, ensured that no one can find any of the wards under any circumstances.
Eventually we'll get used to the new names, of course, but by then it will be time to change them again.
Another curious thing about names: in an area like mine (where language does not vary so much between the U and the non-U as between the non-U and the fuck-U), the housing authorities insist on pastoral connotations to the names they give the tower blocks in which they imprison those thrown upon their mercy, as if calling a venus fly-trap a marigold would stop it catching insects. I even met a middle-class social worker who, on being asked early in her career to visit someone in one of these impressive- sounding buildings, imagined that she was going to sort out the social problems of the gentry, of whose existence she had until then been unaware.
I am not altogether opposed to euphe- mism, however, and I fully acknowledge that social problems must often be tack- led indirectly. I admire, for example, the ingenuity of the city council which decid- ed to reduce both road traffic accidents and street crime in a notorious area of the city by turning off the traffic lights.
Naive drivers to the area would stop at the traffic lights, where waiting gangs would set upon their cars, remove their tyres and radios in less time than it takes to say social security, and rob the drivers of their wallets. Soon, many people learnt not to stop at traffic lights; but those who were new to the area sup- posed that a green light meant that it was all clear for them to drive on. This misunderstanding caused a large number of accidents. Removing the traffic lights at once reduced the rate of robbery and relieved the pressure on the local orthopaedic surgeons. Now that's what I call progress.
Theodore Dalrymple
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