I was hoping I was going to get an ulcer. I was hoping to boost my research career by developing a bleeding ulcer.

To gastroenterologists, the concept of a germ causing ulcers was like saying that the Earth is flat.

If humans evolved in a tiny area of Africa, they only saw plants and animals within a 100-kilometre radius for a million years. When they began to migrate, there would have been different animals and plants - and potentially a lot of allergy issues.

The politics have always been difficult in medicine. There is some truth in the way medical practice is portrayed in TV dramas.

People would have a health care insurance policy they can call their own. They could choose one that exactly fits their families' needs and their budgets, be able to take that coverage with them from job to job and be able to fire their insurance company if it doesn't treat them well.

But beyond the hysteria of phantom death panels, where is the abomination? Show me the provisions that will hurt consumers, because if you think a $110 billion a year tax break for working-class Americans to buy private health insurance is a government takeover, I welcome the debate.

Captives' was a deliberate bridging exercise, an attempt to use detailed knowledge of what Britain was like on the inside, to reach a deeper, more variegated understanding of how its peoples experienced external adventures and aggression over a quarter of a millennium in four continents.

Custard puddings, sauces and fillings accompany the seven ages of man in sickness and in health.