A Case of Need

by Michael Crichton

All surgeons have persecution complexes anyway. Ask the psychiatrists.

THE LAST TIME ANYONE COUNTED, there were 25,000 named diseases of man, and cures for 5,000 of them. Yet it remains the dream of every young doctor to discover a new disease.

The Papp smear is the most accurate diagnostic test in all of medicine.

All practicing doctors feared getting sick. Even small colds were considered bad for your image, for what is loosely called “patient rapport,” and any serious illness became a matter for the utmost secrecy.

Now, of course, surgeons are not barbers, or vice versa. But the barbers retain the symbol of their old trade—the red-and-white-striped pole which represents the bloody white dressings of the battlefield.

I was always wondering what was that rolling thing outside of barber shops