Young women or men in the ward are, unsurprisingly, often visited by their girlfriend or boyfriend. Quite a number of them climb into the bed with him or her, and indulge in highly sexual behaviour, in full view of the other patients, some of whom may be very ill. In one case, such a couple all but made love immediately opposite an eighty year-old man who, though fully conscious, was dying of cancer. One of the nurses asked them to desist for the old man's sake, but the couple turned on her and denounced her as a racist, for they were of a different race from her. The fact that the dying man was of yet a third race did not give them pause, and they continued as before, though not for very long: the young man who was the patient was so outraged by the nurse's request that it festered in his mind and caused him to leave before his treatment was complete.

The nurses on the ward are subjected to every kind and gradation of abuse, from minor insult to death threat. Such behaviour on the part of patients in any of its forms was almost unthinkable only twenty-five years ago. To put up with abuse has become, de facto, part of the job (indeed, the police when called have on occasion said so), and even the more serious episodes, in which the law has clearly been broken, evoke no official response whatever. The nurses are enjoined by their code of ethics from responding in kind or from withdrawing their services.

Our hospital (like others) is plagued by a few people who use emergency ambulances as taxis. They live near the hospital; and when they go out for the evening, get drunk and require transport home, they call for an ambulance. Since the law does not permit the ambulance service any discretion in answering emergency calls, this is an effective way for the people in question to return home quickly, in comfort and free of charge. One such man called for an ambulance more than a hundred and fifty times in a single year: and perhaps it is a sign of the decadence of our society that no means was found - or even, as far as I know, sought - to prevent him from using the service in this profoundly antisocial fashion. We have come to expect people to behave like this: and our expectation has slid inexorably into our acceptance of it.

Such evidence as I have furnished of a breakdown in social order in our hospitals might be regarded as merely anecdotal, but hundreds or thousands of anecdotes are not without social significance: especially if those anecdotes could not have been told in previous years. An exaggerated scepticism is often adopted as the intellectual means by which unpleasant realities are avoided. Personal experience can certainly lead us astray in the assessment of social reality; but so can a stubborn refusal to attach any significance to such experience. It is a moot point whether moral panic or moral complacency poses the greater threat to the well-being of society.