In July 1968 Newcastle University let me loose, veiy young, still a schoolboy really, with a head full of medical lore and a very limited concept of what being a doctor meant, despite my father being a battle-hardened GP in South Shields. Consulting in die modern sense had not been on the curriculum. A couple of half-remembered Oslerism's such as 'The good physician treats the disease; the great physician treats the patient who has the disease' and 'Listen to the patient - she is telling you the diagnosis' had managed to impinge on my consciousness, but were only floating in the 'not quite important' part of my cortex. What after 5 years had been hammered into my mid-brain was 'taking a history'. The nature of the game was diagnosis, demonstrated by often theatrical professors with a flare and mysteiy reminiscent of the best magicians. As in a conjuring trick, the patient supplied a few choice words (the Prof made the choice) and Hey presto! A magical name was pronounced. The diagnosis and all that subsequently followed were cloaked in a mystical paternalistic obfuscation. Prescriptions were still written in Latin, and patients were not encouraged to explore the nature or the consequences of their illness too deeply. There was a long tradition behind this behaviour, dating back to Hippocrates.
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