Doctors on demand

Oliver Cromwell reportedly suffered from renal stones, which feature on our cover this week. According to his doctor, as recorded in The Death of Oliver Cromwell, his preferred coping mechanism was “to swill down several sorts of liquor, and then stir his body by some violent motion . . . that by such agitation he might disburden his bladder.” Medical management has come on a lot since then, as Monica Morgan and Margaret Pearle describe in their State of the Art clinical review (doi:10.1136/bmj.i52).

A modern day Cromwell would …