Learning From History

Here are two ways of saying exactly the same thing —

• “Most people who are violent need a policeman, not a doctor!”
• “Some people who are violent need a doctor, not a policeman!”

I raise this because the first quote comes from a medical handbook I once picked up in a book shop – probably one of those Oxford University Press handbooks with very thin paper pages that you see junior doctors carrying around the place and stuffed into the lower pockets of white clinical jackets.  It was part of a section on responding to violent or disturbed patients in A&E and I’ve left uncorrected the author’s gendered stereotyping of my profession!

IN TWO MINDS

I’ve now told the story A LOT of the poor guy who was extremely resistant (and probably quite frightened) having been detained under the Mental Health Act by some police officers who were then told…