Circa 1977 I read a collection of short stories, all with a medical theme and all told from a British doctor’s point of view (this was in a British library). I have often remembered it, but have never been able to think of the author or the title.
One of the first stories took place in the first world war, and was about a young doctor having to supervise a soldier who was facing the firing squad the next day. The doctor gave the soldier an overdose of some drug, to spare him the hellish wait, and then discovers that the soldier’s punishment would have been commuted.
Another story (humorous this time) was about a doctor dealing with a government inspector’s demand that he write a prescription in order to check the probity of the local pharmacist (possibly this had something to do with the introduction of the National Health Service?). The doctor dislikes this intensely, and cooperates in the most awkward manner possible. One of his efforts at sabotage is to write a prescription for 'A. Test' (Albert Test, an elderly local resident).
The story ends with the local pharmacist telling a visitor about the kerfuffle, and with his saying something like, "We thought it very decent of the doctor to be so punctilious — the old doctor simply gave us a call whenever he wrote a prescription for an inspector"!
The last story takes place in a hospital, and turns on the question of which of several patients will have access to the hospital’s first dialysis machine. The governor of the hospital (ex-military) suggests drawing straws; the doctors involved think that is nonsense, so he tells them to interview each patient thoroughly. The doctors return, each now convinced that their patient deserves to live, and find the hospital governor waiting with the handful of straws, having known from the beginning how near-impossible such a decision would be ...
Given the dialysis machine, I’m sure the book could not have been published before circa 1948, and I remember nothing that would have the book appearing later than the 1950’s.
