Some diseases must declare themselves

When I was a house officer I would regularly see a dishevelled street woman who had numerous bizarre complaints. These she attributed to the dirt she had picked up at a flea market, and she would bring along crumpled bits of paper to prove her point. My chief eventually lost all patience and wrote to the general practitioner asking him not to send “this cantankerous woman” again. Two months later she returned jaundiced, her liver massively …