Still managing to keep out of the way of the authorities,
our own Dokker D'Ath, phsyician to the really needy
(and we mean that,) has finally remembered the combination
of the hospital safe and has helped himself to the right
medication. He is, he says, ready to make his contribution
to the forward thrust of medical science. That hip movement
he does when he says it, however, is not exactly reassuring.
Haircut, anyone?

incisive comments on the body parts of some of the more ghastly patients in their totally confidential medical

ordering nurses around and how I would organise my accounting system kept me constantly enthused. I was a qualified dokker, a master of the healing arts, a fearless combatant of all illness and I thumbed my nose at germs. As I strode the wards in my white coat, tastefully spotted with just a little blood, clipboard in hand, illness quailed before my presence and nurses and patients alike fell to their knees before me imploring me to lay my healing hands upon them.
...Ah, those were the days. In those days dokkers were almost as much feared (I mean, respected) as bank managers. Patients waited with bated breath while they were probed and poked and pulled around as the diagnosis was arrived at. And if, as sometimes happens to every dokker, one had no idea what was wrong it was simple to make up a condition with a Latiny sounding name. If you could make it a nice long one, that always went down well. An illness with a long name, particularly one in Latin, is always so much more desirable. More mystique, you know. Thus it is that emphysema has replaced the phrase ‘a bit of a bad chest.’ More impressive, you see. There would be no intrusive questions about the illness or its treatment; questions were not allowed under the National Health Service and cost extra in private practice. The patient would listen to the diagnosis, nod a couple of times and take the offered prescription. His or her health remained, as it had always been, in the hands of God.
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...It did not, of course, discourage patients from assuming they could be involved in their own treatment when they were allowed access to their medical records. There was a time, at the end of a hard day usually, when us dokkers could rid ourselves of the obsessive fear and hatred of illness, disease and our patients that we naturally develop over time. The opportunity to vent one’s spleen (medical term) with a few

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unlikely to make it through the whole two weeks. Even as veiled statement -- in this case a long black veil -- is going to produce the same effect. Code? Forget it. They ask. “What does DTW mean, dokker,” they enquire in their innocence. Although the Hippocratic oath, which every dokker takes, is, as its name suggests, a licence to lie, it is hard for us dokkers to spare the patient the painful truth. Usually this results in their fairly immediate death. But that’s life, as we dokkers say.
...It is, of course, possible that allowing patients access to their own medical records is a ruse designed to cause their early demise thus freeing up more time to waste on those who aren’t dying. If so it must be pretty successful. It is my contention that all medical records should carry a Government Health Warning. It is a good thing there is more space available on a folder containing