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We have not lost faith but we have transferred it from God to the medical profession. George Bernard Shaw
They took me to an MO – Medical Officer. And he said, ‘Take your clothes off.’ I said, ‘Well shouldn’t you take me out to dinner or something first?’ Spike Milligan, Des O’Connor Show
Mitchell: Maybe you’re not cut out to be a doctor in a bawdy 1970s hospital. Mitchell & Webb s2e1, BBC 2008
It is silliness to live when to live is torment; and then have we a prescription to die when death is our physician. William Shakespeare, Othello I iii 308-310, Roderigo
Do, kill the physician,
And the fee bestow upon the foul disease. William Shakespeare, The History of King Lear I i 153-154, Kent
When I went to the Doctor he gave me six months to live; when I told him I couldn’t pay, he gave me six months more. Walter Matthua, attributions & variations
‘Edward Jenner was a country doctor ... Jenner was interested in everything.’ Genius of Britain II: A Roomful of Brilliant Minds, Richard Dawkins, Channel 4 2012
Edward Jenner took on the number one killer in the eighteenth century: Smallpox. ibid.
Jenner had demonstrated the possibility of vaccination. ibid.
Jenner is rightly regarded as the father of immunology. ibid.
In 1860 Elizabeth Garrett enrolled as a surgical nurse at Middlesex Hospital but her sights were set higher ... She was also cutting up body parts in her bedroom. This improvised education made her bold enough to take part in the hospital’s medical (not nursing) exam. And when the time came to publish the results, one E Garret had come top. Ordered to keep the outrage secret she went public instead. Nine years later the French gave her an MD. Simon Schama, A History of Britain: Forces of Nature, BBC 2000
The medical profession has no nationwide policy on how to get work experience. Which doesn’t exactly help the less well connected. Richard Bilton, Who Gets the Best Jobs? BBC 2011
For more than a century Eastbourne has been home to large numbers of wealthy retired people. Great Crimes & Trials: John Bodkin Adams
Mrs Gertrude ‘Bobby’ Hullett had died apparently of a drugs overdose. ibid.
Three days before her death Mrs Hullett had remade her will leaving the Rolls Royce to Dr Adams. ibid.
Press speculation became intense when it was revealed that Scotland Yard was investigating the deaths of several wealthy and elderly people. ibid.
The search turned up 132 wills in which the doctor had been left some £45,000. ibid.
What was then the longest trial in British legal history the jury withdrew: they were back in only forty-four minutes to find Dr John Bodkin Adams not guilty. ibid.
Oh, that wasn’t done wickedly, God knows it wasn’t. We always want cremations to go off smoothly for the dear relatives. If I said I knew I was getting money under the Will they might get suspicious and I like cremations and burials to go smoothly. There was nothing suspicious really. It was not deceitful. John Bodkin Adams
Easing the passing of a dying person isn’t all that wicked. She [Morrell] wanted to die. That can’t be murder. It is impossible to accuse a doctor. John Bodkin Adams
Murder ... murder ... Can you prove it was murder? ... I didn’t think you could prove it was murder. She was dying in any event. John Bodkin Adams
In the years after the First World War the seaside resort on the Sussex coast became a popular choice for those who were looking for a pleasant retirement home. There was no National Health Service and a doctor's income and practice depended on how willing he was to pay house calls on those who could afford to pay for them.
Born in 1899 Dr Adams, a pious Ulsterman who had answered an advert to join a team of Christian GPs in the town shortly after scraping through his medical degree, proved himself very willing indeed. And over the next 25 years it is widely believed he murdered hundreds of them with injections of morphine and heroin, becoming in the process one of Britain’s wealthiest GPs. When he died he left an estate that was worth around £1.5million at today’s prices but author Jane Robins, who has conducted the first detailed investigation into the sensational 1957 trial that failed to convict the doctor, believes money was not his motive.
‘As I see it Dr Adams liked to preside over death,’ she says. ‘He liked control. He arranged dozens of funerals of patients. Maybe he was just being kind but I don’t think so. There are too many examples of his explosive anger when someone rejected his ‘acts of kindness’, when someone rejected his help with their finances or did not allow him to arrange their will.’ The Express online article Cheryl Stonehouse 25th May 2013, ‘Dr Bodkin Adams: The Serial Killer Who Got Away’
Californian authorities removed the body of an Ohio businessman from a local doctor’s office. He appeared to have died of natural causes. But before long the investigation took a bizarre twist. One suggesting both fraud and murder ... The story of the Doctor of Death. Crime Stories: Doctor of Death, 2009
The police would soon discover the real identity of the body in Doctor Bogg’s office. ibid.
February 1989: Gene Hanson and Dr Richard Boggs had been arrested and charged with insurance fraud and murder. A third suspect John Hawkins remained at large. ibid.
Dr Boggs was found guilty on all counts. ibid.
On an April day last year, a Hollywood computer operator named Barry Pomeroy walked up to the public counter of the Glendale Police Station to file a complaint against a prominent doctor. He said the doctor had tried to kill him with a stun gun.
Pomeroy’s tale, later repeated at a preliminary hearing, was rather strange:
The doctor, he said, approached him one night at a West Hollywood bar called The Spike. Their conversation led to dinner, a trip to Glendale to see its new high-rise architecture and a quick stop by the doctor’s medical office. A few days later, the doctor took him there again, on their way to a Glendale restaurant. He offered to give Pomeroy an EKG, and Pomeroy accepted. Then the doctor opened his arms, enfolded Pomeroy in what Pomeroy thought would be an embrace, but, instead, began to jab at the back of his neck with a small black device that gave a paralyzing shock. Los Angeles Times online article Doug Smith 29th October 1989, ‘The Rise and Fall of Dr Boggs: How a Mysterious Death in the Doctor’s Office Brought a Once-Promising Career to an End’
I found out that the police had actually investigated Shipman before in March 1998 quite soon after breaking the story ... Shipman went on to kill three more women after that. Mikaela Sitford, author Addicted to Murder
He’d groomed that community so that they truly believed in him and thought that he was looking after them, when in fact he was killing them by the hundred. Mikaela Sitford