A Luce Affiliation

Every now and then we get a Dead on Arrival come to ED. When people are found dead, they need to be 'certified'.  That is to say, you're not dead until the paperwork's done. A few weeks ago I went to certify a DoA that arrived about 4am.  The body was in a hearse in the ambulance bay, attended by two old, ocker funeral workers. I realised as I approached them that I'd forgotten a torch, to check the dead person's eyes.  I said to  the men, half-jokingly, 'Oh, I forgot my pupil-torch.' To which one of the men replied, 'Oh don't worry love, he hasn't got eyes.' Awesome.

Jason and I have returned from Western Australia with a suntan and some excellent secondhand books. First, a pristine copy of 'Homeopathy for Emergencies': This is a lightweight, pocket-sized alternative to the Australian College of Emergency Medicine's preferred 2100-page tome, 'Tintinalli's Emergency Medicine'.  It covers the core Fellowship Examination syllabus, including appendicitis, acute asthma, heat stroke, fractures and 'crushed fingers and toes'.  I particularly like the ominous image of the smashed bottle with pills on the front. Perhaps it was the inspiration for the Homeopathic A&E? My second excellent find was Sartre's 'Quiet Moments in a War', a collection of letters to Simone de Beauvoir during WWII. Sartre served in some type of meteorological division.  His notes about his own reading- Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty- are fascinating.  But the best parts are Sartre's accounts of mundane army life. He