Gherkin Street

By Red Dinger:

Good evening fellow Doctors. As the Chief Medical Officer for our notorious prison system I have been asked to explain some of the differences between ordinary and prison medicine.

As you would expect, we get a lot more stab wounds and broken bones from the general melee that happens daily in prison. Of course, much of those injuries could be avoided by simply executing the prisoners. This being somewhat contrary to the Hippocratic Oath then perhaps the simple alternative is to tell the prison guards to stop playing with the prisoners.

However, I expect that is unlikely, especially as the guards do so like playing dodge ball with the inmates. The inmates aren’t very good though. Most of them cannot run very fast in leg chains so they aren’t very successful in avoiding the beer bottles being thrown at them.

That said, many of the injuries that inmates suffer are received from their fellow prisoners.

For example, let me show the photo taken of Butch James. You will see how terribly hunched over he is. Many doctors would consider this a classic case of lumbago or some other form of back complaint. However, in the prison system you have to investigate further. It turns out that the other prisoners super-glued Butch’s hands to his feet. Its hard to know exactly why although I suspect that the other prisoners found Butch’s “playing hard to get” routine just a bit tiresome.

Now please look at the photo of our next patient, Johnny “The Knife”. Johnny was complaining of stomach pains. By assessing Johnny’s history I could see that he had put on 15 kilograms. Prison will do that to you, especially if, like Johnny, you are unable to go to the toilet while someone else is watching.

As you can see, this next patient is terribly pale and emaciated. A typical doctor might believe that the patient had some form of stomach complaint. Rather than run lots of invasive and costly tests I was able to simply deduce the cause and cure of the problem – the patient had been foolish enough to eat the prison food. I simply prescribed that the patient get by on contraband alcohol and drugs like all the other prisoners and he’ll soon be fine.

This next patient is a classic case of what happens in a hardcore prison. You can see that this man has been assaulted, sexually abused, shaved, tortured and generally harassed by the other prisoners. What’s worse, the inmate had gone insane as he repeatedly claimed that he was a prison guard named Jason Jones. Ironically, we did have a prison guard named Jason Jones however he turned up one day unshaven and with a bunch of new tattoos, promptly quit his job and hasn’t been seen since.

Unfortunately, there was nothing we could do for that patient except sedation until he was strong enough to be put back in with the rest of the prisoner population.

In this next image you will see the terrible bruising and lacerations to another patient’s ears. It may surprise you to learn that those injuries were self-inflicted. However, I am sure you will understand when I tell you that the width between the bars on the patient’s cell window are exactly the same as the width of the patients head, ears notwithstanding. Some prisoners will do almost anything to get just one more peek at the sun!

Of course, many of the inmate illnesses I see can be simply cured by fresh air and exercise. I had an excellent success rate by prescribing just that. In fact, it wasn’t long before the incidence of patient illness fell to zero. That was before the police recaptured most of the prisoners.

Id just like to close by pointing out to anyone considering a career as a prison medical officer that a perquisite is a strong moral code as the temptation to “supplement” your otherwise meagre income by selling narcotics can be very compelling.

Blackmail and the threat of physical violence are also factors, especially as some prisoner’s sentences actually expire.

For the record though, this Armani suit is borrowed and the Porsche is my wife’s. As are her three houses. The bling however is mine though. Good evening.