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BMJ 2004;328:1342 (5 June), doi:10.1136/bmj.328.7452.1342
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It is not always an easy matter for a physician to judge, with precision, when a patient ought to be discharged from the hospital. It sometimes happens that patients, whose circumstances at home are necessitous, and their lives laborious, wish to loiter in the house as patients, and being cured of real diseases, would amuse the physician with fictitious feelings, of which he cannot constitute himself a judge, as pain in the stomach or the bowels, general or local rheumatisms, and a variety of similar complaints.
The history and statutes of the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh. Edinburgh: E Balfour and Smellie, 1778: 86
Jeremy Hugh Baron, honorary professorial lecturer
Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York