A poem written and read by Professor James Drife on the occasion of the Medico-Legal Dinner Old Hall, Lincoln's Inn, London, 21 May 2012
1. O doctors and lawyers! O doctors and lawyers!
Your Annual Dinner's predictably joyous,
A festive occasion for many a year
Overflowing with legal and medical cheer.
2. Each year it begins with the President's grace:
Each year it is held in a different place
With professional links – a rotation that gives
Us a rare chance to see how the other half lives.
3. One year, p'rhaps, a hospital's all-night canteen,
With food from the privatised vending machine:
The next, chandeliers and armorial shields
In the pleasant surroundings of Lincoln's Inn Fields,
4. In the Old Hall – and “old” is the right diagnosis
For it dates back to almost the Wars of the Roses,
That turbulent era with battles galore
So familiar to viewers of BBC4.
5. But with Henry the Seventh secure on the throne
The building trade quickly came into its own:
They hammered and banged without rest or repose
In their high-visibility doublets and hose,
6. And when they were finished the vista was grand
Looking over the fields and across to the Strand:
But that was 1490, a long time before
The Surgeons had built their extension next door.
7. The Surgeons moved in around 1802,
So they still feel a little bit awkward and new:
Their previous place wasn't roomy enough –
They're the type that collects simply oodles of stuff …
8. Skeletons, elephants, scorpions, trout …
I tell you, they never throw anything out.
They've disposable gowns, but the rest has to stay:
They're a great disappointment on wheelie-bin day.
9. Enough of this gossip! I know that it's fun
But it's not why you've come here from W1,
From your usual home, which you all know so well,
Between Cavendish Square and the Langham Hotel.
10. Chandos House is the venue where down through the ages
You've had all sorts of lectures from eminent sages –
Scientists, authors, policemen, law lords,
Surgeons, psychiatrists straight from the wards –
11. On subjects requiring both insight and tact,
From amphetamine use to the Bribery Act.
There are so many aspects to medicine and law!
The list of their topics inspired me with awe:
12. Like “Poisoning coroners” – sorry, I mean
“Poisoning” (pause) “Coroners” (comma between) –
And “Reforming the NHS south of the border”
(A subject preceded by “Memory disorder”).
13. Murder by insulin … medical error …
Bombs on the bus and the spreading of terror …
Sequelae of having a blow to the head,
Or of going abroad and then ending up dead.
14. The questions they've raised must be haunting you still:
Is every prime minister mentally ill?
Are all medical journals an utter disgrace?
Can a summing-up ever be evidence-based?
15. Thank goodness we doctors don't have to decide!
Thank goodness you lawyers are tested and tried,
And well able to think about questions like these
Given adequate time and appropriate fees.
16. Unlike med'cine, law solely relies on the brain:
It is rare in a court to hear counsel complain,
“If it please you, m’lud, it is time you were told:
My client's upset 'cos your hands were too cold.”
17. Mind you, medicine no longer relies on palpation
Now we have robots to do operations,
Scans and cardiograms and blood tests and such,
So when patients undress they say, “Look but don't touch!”
18. Yes, med'cine keeps changing the rules of the game
But thank goodness the law remains largely the same!
So between you and me, may I make this confession:
Doctors secretly envy the legal profession;
19. The judges, whose wigs are an essential feature,
Whether or not they have true alopecia;
The barristers, blessed now with brains and with beauty,
Suavely dissecting those breaches of duty;
20. The solicitors, skilled in the wording to frame
A totally watertight statement of claim,
And who, generally speaking, can manage to find
A medical expert who won't change his mind.
21. But when dealing with doctors, what lawyers do best
Is remaining straight-faced, never looking distressed
By the locum who's foreign and not very bright,
By the surgeon who can't tell his left from his right,
22. By the swabs that are left in the strangest of places,
By the Botox disasters with lopsided faces;
And when faced with a witness who's tending to ramble
They just think, “Well … at least it's not Alistair Campbell”.
23. So it's time for a toast, as I'm sure you'll agree,
And I'm glad that the duty has fallen to me
Of raising a glass as the poetry ends
And looking around at my medical friends,
24. As they eagerly wait for the signal to stand
And drink to the lawyers all over the land.
So here it comes now – please respond to my call:
To the Law and the lawyers! Good health to them all!
