Doctors’ surgeries are not what they were.
Years ago they were situated in dirty back-streets, and were merely houses like their neighbours, with brown paint peeling from the doors, and weeds in the path. If you were new to the district, you simply followed the smell of disinfectant, sniffing the breeze like a Bisto Kid. Where the vapour trail lead, if it had a brass plate fixed to the wall, you were there.
A Leading Brand of Jollop
Inside, you were lucky if you got lino, let alone carpet. Doctors were poor as mice then, and the two often shared the same premises. What you did get was a stony-faced nurse who commanded you to wait. “You vill sit in ze vaiting room!” And there you sat, in embarrassed silence, not daring to make eye-contact with the others, until called from on high.
Doctors themselves all adopted a chilly, impersonal air, and wore their hair plastered tightly to their scalp. Grease was the word. Every one of them spoke with that clipped British accent you hear in 1940′s films. They had seen it all. Every infection, every disease, every ailment tramped into their surgery, was subjected to the indignities of the doctoring racket, and tramped out again.
Mostly, those walking ailments tramped out with a prescription, scribbled in that illegible Latin stuff which they teach them at medical colleges. Curiously though, whatever the complaint, when made up at the chemists (they like to call themselves pharmacists now), the prescriptions mostly turned out to be the same thing.
Jollop .
Jollop usually came in a large brown bottle with dire warnings plastered on the label. Ingredients included ipececuana, essence of creosote, concentrated snake-juice, paint stripper and artificial flavouring. (Don’t try this at home.) Jollop tasted indescribably horrid, and could paralyse your tongue for the rest of the day.
When my generation were kids, Jollop was served in a large spoon, with our mothers pouring it into our open mouths while pinching our nostrils shut. This wasn’t to assist the process, you understand. It was just that our mothers were all sadists.
Jollop was credited with preventing mumps, impetigo, rabies, scabies, babies and ingrowing toe-nails. It could grow back severed limbs, and restore virginity to a fifty year old Port Said tart. It was rumoured to be the actual means whereby Jesus got Lazarus back on his feet again.
Anyway, I had been feeling a little off colour, a trifle chesty, and there seemed to be mice scampering about in my thoughts. I went in search of the surgery.
Gone.
Vanished overnight. It seems that some time ago, when I was looking the other way, the Government of the day renegotiated doctors’ contracts, and inadvertantly added a nought to their salaries. Worried that the government might spot this and ask for it back, the doctors went out and spent it.
On a palace. Set in its own grounds, every sort of facility, all mod cons — and they called it a Medical Centre.
The Actual Pleasure Dome
This new place is the actual stately pleasure dome decreed by Kubla Khan. There is a spacious central area where “customers” may recline and swap symptoms with their neighbours. There are large fish tanks so that the fish may gaze at the customers. The walls are bright with posters which advertise some of the fascinating diseases which are available on the NHS.
When my turn came, my name lit up on a computer screen. A conveyor belt carried me to my doctors office, one of several hundred. His office was neat and clean and filled with diabolical machines, all with buttons to press.
He was an old, old man trapped in a thirty-eight-year-old body. Like my last doctor, he had seen it all. He looked at me over the top of his spectacles. Doctors always do this. It makes them appear wise and benevolent. I do it myself, though I am neither.
He pressed a button on one of the instruments of Satan, and my medical history appeared on a screen. I wondered if it included that nasty rash I picked up in my youth, but I wasn’t going to ask.
“Not much here.” my doctor said. “I think we’d better give you the works.”
I allowed myself to be prodded and poked, pushed and pulled. I stood still to be weighed and measured. He poked a thermometer in my mouth to keep me quiet, and took my pulse during the lull. I looked up as he shone a torch in my eyes. I said “aaaah” obediently as he inspected my tonsils for wear and tear. He took my blood pressure, and stole some blood for his personal collection. I dropped my trousers and coughed on demand. He produced a stethoscope from the surgery fridge and listened to my chest intently, tapping it like an old-time rail inspector, checking for cracks.
Then he leaned back, looked me straight in the eye, and said “Hmmmm.”
This is another thing they teach ‘em. “Hmmm” is so delightfully non-committal. It frightens the patient stiff. It is assumed that “Hmmmm” is medical short-hand for “You have at least three hideous diseases, and won’t see the day out.” It is also some small revenge for having to examine the patient’s disgusting, slug-white, sagging lump of mortal clay.
“Well?” I said. “Am I going to die?”
“I’m afraid so…” He was almost cheerful about it.
“How long have I got?” I asked.
He looked at his watch. Not the most tactful thing, for a man so recently under sentence of death. “Some time between now and thirty years from now.”
This is what passes for humour among doctors.
What I had, he explained, was an URTI. Nothing to worry about, the URTI, if caught early. It had been not catching it early that had seen off the dinosaurs. The URTI was an Upper Respiratory Tract Infection, and would yield easily to modern miracle drugs. Also I was a bit run down, which accounted for the background hiss in my thoughts. A second miracle drug would give me super-human strength.
He pressed a button, and another invention of the Devil chattered and whirred, and spat out a piece of paper. On it were the same old magic incantations as in days of yore, this time is legible form. “One tablespoonful” he translated. “To be taken three times a day. Next!”
Another button summoned the next patient and the conveyor belt jolted into action and carted me off to the surgery pharmacy, prescription in hand.
Arriving home, I opened the sealed package they had given me.
One guess.
Right first time. Jollop . Jollop lives on. Jollop is the miracle drug.
Forget Grease.
Jollop is the word.
