If symptoms persist.. .

I HAVE recently returned from a trip to Argentina, and, as we know, Mrs Thatcher was the greatest reformer in the history of that great southern repub- lic. She had rather less success with her own country, of course, which is just as she found it: grey and grubby, supporting an atrociously dressed population with an insatiable appetite for the most footling entertainments.

So it wasn't altogether surprising that the ward was much the same on my return as I had left it a few weeks before. A new notice had appeared on the inside of the ward office door, however, printed by management, asking staff for their suggestions as to how morale might be improved. The two suggestions forth- coming were 'early retirement' and `change of profession'.

The first patient I saw after my brief sojourn in sunnier climes was a young woman who had recently discovered that life with three children aged between two and four, with no male companion, in a high-rise flat and on an income of £37 a week was not as it is portrayed in advertisements for Bacardi rum. She took an overdose.

`What did you do then?' I asked.

`Well, if you take an overdose and fall asleep, you never wake up, so I had to stay awake.'

I asked her how she normally spent her day.

`After my second was born, they sent me to pregnant school.'

`I thought you already knew how to get pregnant.'

`They taught me exercises and how to dress the baby.'

I asked her whether she still wanted to kill herself.

`I wish I'd never of done it,' she said. `But you have to face the consequences of what you've done, or something.'

What interested me, but what I never found out, was what she meant by the or something, other than the consequences.

The next patient had drunk too much the night before, and it had gone straight to his feet, to judge by the smell emanat- ing from the end of his bed.

`I'm living rough, doctor,' he said. `Why?'

`I should never've got married.' `What's that got to do with it?'

`Well, doctor, she chucked me out. Until I married her I never had no prob- lems. Women was nothing to me: you just went out and got one if you wanted one.'

`Where?' I asked.

`Anywhere. I had hundreds of women until I met her.'

`And afterwards?'

`Well, I slipped up now and again.'

His wife appeared on the ward, having been informed of her husband's admis- sion to hospital. I asked whether it was true she had asked him to leave.

`Yes, doctor. I had to get the police on to him. I couldn't take no more.'

`No more of what?'

`Jealousy. He kept accusing me of hav- ing affairs all the while, and locking me in the bedroom.'

My third patient was unemployed, but he said he would very much like to work.

`I'm a hactive person, doctor, I can't keep still, but I wish I could relax more. I'd like to be idle in my mind, but how long can you stay standing still without rubbing your nose or something?'

`I know it's difficult to find work,' I said.

`Yes,' he said. 'And everything I've had in life was low-paid and went bust.'

Theodore Dalrymple