Fabula

The lady passenger I picked up from our local hospital was furious. She told me that she had been waiting for months to see a specialist about a skin complaint. Finally after weeks of suffering she gets to see the Doctor and undergoes a battery of tests, spending nearly the full day in the clinic. At the end of all the tests and examinations she is called into the consultant's office to be told the diagnosis. She sits waiting nervously to be told the verdict, wondering if and hoping that she can be cured. The Doctor sits at his desk ignoring her whilst he reads the notes and then finally looks up and says "yes OK you can go now." "But what's wrong with me you haven't told me" she pleads "ah yes he replied you have itchy skin". The poor lady told me that she was so flabbergasted by this; she just thanked him and walked out. A few days later another passenger I picked up from the hospital was also very upset, this one a young lass who had visited the emergency Doctors clinic up there. She had gone up suffering with back pain and again she had been given an equally strange and vague diagnosis. The poor lass told me they said "your too fat" and "to go on a diet." She was the first to admit that she was a little on the large side but said "OK but they could have been a bit more tactful." Myself I put it down to a language problem, if as in days long gone when our Doctors were taught Latin both women would have walked out happy. The lady with the itchy skin could have milked her case of "sensilus cutticula " for all it was worth. And our portly young lass would have been more than happy to follow a strict diet to cure her "nimbis corpulentus".

Translations to Latin available here.