An end to institutions?

Whenever I feel sorry for myself, which is not infrequently, I try to think of those less fortunate than I am—who, after all, are the great mass of the world’s population. This technique, I am ashamed to say, seldom works; I still feel just as sorry for myself as before.

Nevertheless, I should recommend everyone inclined to the vice of self pity, especially doctors, to read John Vaizey’s Scenes from Institutional Life, a brief memoir of the author’s two years during the war spent in hospital being treated for osteomyelitis of the spine. Vaizey (1929-84) triumphed over the most terrible suffering to become an eminent university professor of economics and member of the House …