BMJ  2007;335:1049 (17 November), doi:10.1136/bmj.39398.491250.59

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Between the Lines

In memoriam

Theodore Dalrymple, writer and retired doctor

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Am I morbid when I say that there comes a time in life when you wonder what people will say about you when you're gone? The answer, of course, is that they won't think at all about you, at least for much or most of the time. Life itself dictates that it must go on even without our help: we are as pebbles dropped into a pond, causing a few ripples at most.

When Dr Levet, whom Boswell described as "an obscure practitioner of physic" and who came of the humblest background, died in 1782 aged 77, the landlord with whom he had lodged for many years wrote a commemorative poem that immortalised him. It happened that his landlord was Doctor Johnson, himself 72 at the time.

Their relationship was a strange one. Levet was not talkative or amusing when he did talk, but it seems that Doctor Johnson took . . . [Full text of this article]


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