Second Opinion

Drug addicts and desperate drunks, battered wives and suicidal burglars, elderly Alzheimer's sufferers and teenage stabbing victims all pass through Theodore Dalrymple's surgery - and he uses the experience of treating them to examine life for those unfortunate enough to live at the bottom end of society. He writes with a combination of dry humour, compassion and, occasionally, anger - mostly at the inhuman bureaucracy of the system, which works against the doctors and nurses as they try to help their patients.