David Vost

MODERN medical laboratories are crammed with high-tech, sleek machines, automatic analysers replacing technicians. The doctor decides which tests are indicated by choosing from column after column of possibilities. Not infrequently an alarmed medical refugee from elsewhere will appear, clutching lab reports and asking for a second opinion. By then, they will have googled the diseases mentioned on the reports. I explain that the more tests done, including CT scans and MRIs in normal people, the more likely that abnormalities will be spotted, even if they have no bearing on the current illness.

DESPITE working for a few years in South Africa then remaining in the rand monetary area after crossing the border into Swaziland, I have never dabbled in the Republic’s stock and shares. However, I did once buy a small heap of frosted krugerrands. These were handsome coins containing one ounce of pure gold and were popular in the apartheid era as a hedge against inflation. The frosted variety were more expensive due to the unusual and attractive design on their surfaces, its description helpi

The first members of any royal family I met were several of the wives of the Baganda kings or Kabakas who we greeted as part of a small delegation from Nsambya Hospital in Kampala. They were sitting talking on grass mats, barely visible in the shadows at the rear of an enormous thatched rondaval which was where the public came to pay their respects. The royal family had ruled most of southern Uganda for years, becoming a British protectorate in 1893.

INSECTS alter our behaviour out here at anytime of day or night, quite the opposite of the situation in Britain. A review of modern farming in England and its effect on what used to be called the countryside horrified this reader. Agribusiness practices had eliminated trees, hedges, and wetlands; wildlife including birds and insects were decimated by pesticides, herbicides and other chemicals.

PATIENTS vary widely in their acceptance of injections. Vusi Ngubane turned up monthly without fail at one of our mobile clinics way out in the bush, insisting on a jova whether indicated or not. He was the local headman, always traditionally dressed in skins, bare chested, a sacred feather embedded in his hair, bangles on the ankles, strings of dried seeds round his chest, bare footed and with a brutal-looking knobkerrie in one hand. He generated a lot of noise and disruption – I found it sat

IT WAS while listening to my father’s partner one afternoon at the surgery in Stirling that I first became aware that some patients would try to engineer a few days off duty by deception.

ONE definition of a consulting room is a place where one seeks information or advice from a professional, usually a doctor or a lawyer. Modern ones may be bereft of colour but with high tech electronics to the fore, their walls gleaming but bare, seating smart functional, the reception areas similar. Patients are assumed not to want any diversion from their symptoms or illness, being anxious, worried, in pain or scared stiff.

THE thought of running a restaurant began when I worked during the summer breaks from medical school as a barman and night porter at the Covenanters

MUCH as we enjoy visits from friends, family and colleagues to our Ugandan home, those not used to living in the bush have to be pre-warned about our level of civilisation.

THE only boards I could name prior to leaving for Africa were the British Boxing Board of Control and the Schools Education Board. Both were concerned with leather, the former as in matters pertaining to professional pugilists’ boxing gloves, the latter to the thick strips of cattle hide known in the trade as a ‘Lochgelly’ and distributed to schools for disciplining unruly pupils.