Clinical Signs

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Doctors have a unique view of the human body. Centuries of observing the sick and decades of testing these observations against science. A diagnosis starts with interrogation followed by observation, clinched by the appropriate test. Clinical skills are focused on patients, but friends and family are not exempt. The real test comes when the physician himself becomes acutely unwell without warning. This is a story of the continuing importance of clinical signs in the age of artificial intelligence. The story of a doctor who for decades used his diagnostic skills with and without the aid of technology and who suddenly becomes dependent on the healthcare system in which he has spent his whole working life. The author was a clinician in the National Health Service for over 40 years, specialising in diabetes and endocrinology. He has worked in teaching hospitals around the UK, Japan and New Zealand, as well as a mission hospital in Tanzania and a refugee camp in Zaire. This memoir documents the way clinical skills are acquired and applied in the care of the sick. However, when illness descended out of the blue, he was forced to apply those skills to himself whilst simultaneously adopting the role of the patient.