Theodore Dalrymple - If Symptoms Persist

IF SYMPTOMS PERSIST

Theodore Dalrymple

Monday Books

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If Symptoms Persist

Theodore Dalrymple, 2011

The following articles all appeared in The Spectator

First published in book form in the United Kingdom by Andr Deutsch Ltd, as If Symptoms Persist (in 1994) and If Symptoms StillPersist (in 1996).

The right of Theodore Dalrymple to beidentified as the Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordancewith the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

All rights reserved. Apart from any usepermitted under UK copyright law no part of this publication may be reproduced,stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulatedin any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published andwithout a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Author, doctor, psychiatrist andjournalist Theodore Dalrymple was born in London in 1949 to a German mother andRussian father. After qualifying as a doctor in 1974, he chose to travel andtake his trade to the far flung shores of Zimbabwe, Tanzania, South Africa and the Gilbert Islands. When he returned to the United Kingdom he worked in the EastEnd of London and then inner city Birmingham in a hospital and the nearbyprison. His medical work has brought him into contact with drug addicts andalcoholics, career criminals and sex offenders, the mentally disturbed andbattered wives and their lives have inspired him to write. He has also appearedas an expert witness in numerous murder trials.

Dalrymple has written widely and regularlyfor publications as diverse as The Spectator, The New Statesman, The Times, TheTimes Literary Supplement, The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Telegraph, TheSunday Times, and The British Medical Journal, as well as many prestigiousAmerican magazines and newspapers.

He also writes under his real name AnthonyDaniels. Now retired from medical work, he is still a prolific writer anddivides his time between the UK and France.

Praise for Theodore Dalrymple

'The harsh truths he tells are all the moreshocking because the media, in general, is unwilling to tell them'

Daily Telegraph

Dalrymples clarity of thought, precision ofexpression and constant, terrible disappointment give his dispatches from thefrontline a tone and a quality entirely their own their rarity makes you situp and take notice

The Spectator

'He actually cares about the people at thebottom of the social heap while public sector jobsworths and slimy politiciansonly pretend to'

Daily Express

'He could not be further from the stereotypeof the 'little Englander' conservative he is arguably our greatest livingessayist'

Standpoint

Dalrymples is the crystal voice of reason.

Literary Review

Also by TheodoreDalrymple

SECOND OPINION

Last week, a patient arrived in theprison, a fit (though presumably not very skilful) young burglar.

Are you on any treatment? I asked him.

Yes, he said. DF 118, diazzies andamitrippiline.

An opiate analgesic, an addictivetranquilliser and an anti-depressant.

Why? I asked.

Backache, he replied.

Ah, a burglar with a backache. I said.

He smiled at me, and I smiled back. Thenwe had a good chuckle together. I knew, he knew I knew, I knew he knew I knew,and he knew I knew he knew I knew.

Nice one, Doctor, he said as he left theroom, in excellent spirits.

Drug addicts and desperate drunks,battered wives and suicidal burglars, elderly Alzheimer's sufferers and teenagestabbing victims all pass through Theodore Dalrymples surgery and he exposes,with humour and incite, the unseen horror of modern life as never before.

LIFE AT THE BOTTOM

On the street, which was ankle-deep indiscarded fast-food wrappings, I saw a woman who had pulled down her slacks andtied a pair of plastic breasts to her bare buttocks, while a man crawled afterher on the sidewalk, licking them. At midnight along this street with thesound of rock music pounding insistently out of club doors presided over bysteroid-inflated bouncers, among men vomiting into the gutters I saw childrenas young as six, unattended by adults, waiting for their parents to emerge fromtheir nocturnal recreations.

Life at the Bottom has been called atimeless classic and a work of genius by American critics.

Here Dalrymple writes about crime, cultureand the collapse of the British way of life from an unashamedly conservativeperspective and he lays the blame squarely on the shoulders of the liberalintellectuals, who tend 'not to mean quite what they say, and expressthemselves more to flaunt the magnanimity of their intentions than to propagatetruth.

THEEXAMINED LIFE

'Why are you wearing that face mask?'asked one of the security guards.

'Germs, of course,' I said. 'Ubiquitous -they're everywhere.'

'They are for us, too,' he said, 'andwe're not wearing masks.'

This was exactly the same argument as thedoctor uses.

'What consolation was it to the victims ofthe Black Death that there were millions of other victims?' I said.

'The Black Death?' said the security guardto his colleague. 'What's he on about?'

A brief and witty satire on contemporaryhealth and safety culture.

The unnamed anti-hero is a man who takesto heart every tabloid newspaper health scare, guards himself against everyconceivable illness and worries endlessly about his mortality. He wearsprotective clothing to go shopping when he can't shop on-line and every inch ofunprotected skin is smeared in various creams and lotions. Unfortunately, hiscaution is his eventual undoing as this elegantly written and amusing novellareaches its climax.

NOT WITH A BANG BUT A WHIMPER

A beautifully-written andthought-provoking collection of essays on social, political and literary issuesas diverse as violent crime on Britain's streets, the effects of the welfarestate, modern architecture and the respective merits of Shakespeare and Dr. Johnson.

Dalrymple uses examples from his longcareer as a prison doctor and his travels to every corner of the globe toillustrate his central view - that Britain is in the throes of social, culturaland political decline.

ANYTHING GOES

Britain and theWest are mired in a culture of untruth, wilful blindness andideologically-motivated deceit, argues Theodore Dalrymple in this collection ofbrilliant and beautifully-written essays. This has had a variety of effects -some trivial, others less so. From political correctness among doctors to theruinous failures of the World Health Organisation, from riots in Londonto sex changes for 12-year-olds, from the end of free speech to the strangefury of evangelical atheists, and from the collapse of our bubble economy tothe failure of the criminal justice system, it all goes back to the death ofhonesty.

THE POLICEMAN AND THE BROTHEL

A Victorian Murder

Deep in the bleak winter of 1846... Jersey is home to tens of thousands of rough-and-ready sailors, who spend their timedrinking, chasing loose women and gambling through the teeming and chaoticstreets.

The job of keeping order in the crowdeddockside tenements, raucous brothels and riotous public houses falls to electedcenteniers such as the respected and feared George Le Cronier.