Second opinion

NATURE, in her infinite wisdom and mercy, has decreed that a goodly proportion of mankind should be born ugly: but that, of course, has not in the least discouraged mankind from supplementing her efforts. The British, it seems, are particularly talented in this direction and, for them, not only stupidity but also ugliness have taken the place of greatness: some are born ugly, some achieve ugliness and others have ugliness thrust upon them.

Last week I was consulted by a man who had had ugliness thrust upon him, not once but repeatedly. His face was criss-crossed by scars, ranging from white to livid. I pointed to the most prominent. It was a healed gash that extended from his forehead across his eye socket to his cheek below (he was blind in that eye).

'How did you get that?' I asked.

'I was defending this girl in a pub from her boyfriend who was beating her up, when she turned round and put a broken bottle in my face. It was Newcastle Brown.'

'The beer is immaterial,' I said. 'Did you call the police?'

'No.'

'Why not?' I asked.

'Well, she must've had problems of her own.'

0 problems, what crimes are committed in thy name! I pointed to a nasty-looking scar on my patient's neck.

'How did you get that?' I asked.

'That was her boyfriend. He ripped it with his teeth.'

And he had problems too. I suppose?' 'Yeah, he must've.'

The patient in the next bed was being withdrawn from his many drugs of abuse. You name it, he took it. He looked very worried.

'Doctor,' he said, 'do you think that if I get better, I'll lose my sick pay?'

'I shouldn't think so,' I replied.

'Why not?'

'Because sick pay has nothing whatever to do with being sick,' I said.

He laughed, but then grew serious again.

'But you won't grass me up, will you, doctor?'

'No, of course not.'

'Because I don't want to get no better if I lose my sick pay.'

I reassured him that work was not around the corner. In the next bed was an alcoholic with mild shakes. I asked him whether he took drugs. He seemed shocked by the suggestion. 'I'm not a pillhead, or nothing like that,' he said.

I asked him how he had reached his present condition.

'I lived at Hill Road — that's when the drinking really started.'

How pleasant it is after a morning in the hospital to retreat to the rational, ordered universe of the prison! If prison does not work, as so many of our intelligentsia say (without, of course, believing it for a moment), it is purely because people are not in it sufficiently long, It isn't true that you can't teach an old lag new tricks: on the contrary, you can teach only an old lag new tricks.

My first patient in the prison was an aging hippy with long, greasy hair (there's only one thing less becoming in a man than long hair, and that's short hair). He told me he was withdrawing from heroin.

'I stopped for three years, doctor,' he said. 'But then I started again after my son died.'

And what did he die of?' I asked. "Eroin overdose.

Theodore Dalrymple