A pile of strangeness

“This anthology amassed itself like a cairn,” write Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes in the first line of their marvellous collection of poetry The Rattle Bag. It's the same with the Christmas BMJ. There is no master plan. Rather we wait to see what accumulates, and this year, I judge, we have a goodly pile.

The essence of the Christmas BMJ is strangeness. It's our left brain issue. We want everything to be not as it seems. Thus streptokinase is used not to treat patients but to do the laundry (p 1554). Instead …