Still managing to keep out of the way of the authorities,
our own Dokker D'Ath, physician 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?

confidential medical records was both
enjoyable and therapeutic. But no more. These days patients can demand

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, ill-
ness 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 desir-
able. 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 al-
ways been, in the hands of God.
...They were innocent days. Clear and
understandable days. Days in which

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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 nat-
urally develop over time. The opport-
unity to vent one’s spleen (medical
term) with a few incisive comments
on the body parts of some of the more
ghastly patients in their totally

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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 medical records than on a cigarette packet because they are going to need it for this warning. ‘These medical records may damage your physical