Big and fundamental questions

Douglas Black, one of Britain's best loved doctors, has a growth in his pancreas and is experiencing intimations of mortality (p 1342). How best, he wondered some time back, to prepare for a terminal illness? His thoughts include several of those wonderful, understated asides for which he is famous. “Even healthy doctors may not be brilliant at managing their affairs—there are so many more interesting things to do … The best way to discover what people really think is not to consider what they say or write (though that can help), but to …