# Medical alphabet...



## Northerner (Jan 25, 2015)




----------



## Lindarose (Jan 25, 2015)

I recognise it! So true


----------



## trophywench (Jan 25, 2015)

Well - I don't think it IS medical, because medical things are written in English - ok you may not understand the terminology but Wiki it and you will.

However, Doctorese looks very like that.

Mind, I have an advantage as I worked at the Min of Pens & NI when medical certificates were handwritten and although *Plumbumitis and Ergophobia were both conditions I'd not come across before - I VERY soon got to know them WELL !

(* Swinging the lead and a morbid fear of work)


----------



## Copepod (Jan 26, 2015)

It's about handwriting, not terminology. Actually helped a 5th medical student (with lovely clear handwriting) complete an incident report form for a mountain race recently. I suggested adding that race partner had dressed wound on fellside, emphasising pair was adequately skilled and equipped, confirming that pre race getting of mountain experience had worked.


----------



## AlisonM (Jan 26, 2015)

I once worked for the Department of Stealth and Total Obscurity too, dealing with industrial injury claims and that reminds me so much of many of the certs and letters we had to try and decipher. There were a lot of Ergophobics to be dealt with there as well.


----------



## trophywench (Jan 26, 2015)

LOL Alison - it was more on the Sickness benefit claims that we got em at West Bromwich - most of the IB claimants had silicosis from the foundries and drop-forging, chain making etc - not for nuthin was it called the Black Country.  I had an ole bloke on SB - he actually had emphysema from his time on the 'shop' floor, but got out before it got worse and had been a tenant publican for a good many years.  His Christian name was either Ezekiel or Ephraim or something like that - a really old-fashioned name even then.  Middle aged men were called Alf or Edward or George sort of names and of course then you had Roys, Alans Johns and Roberts.  He was also claiming the extra for his wife, whose name was Gladys, or Gwen sort of name.

Imagine my surprise then when I sent a Shuttle (BM3 LOL) off to RO in Newcastle for a Mat Ben claim for somebody called Carol, Pat or Susan - you know, same names as all my mates at school so sounded about right for Mat Ben - and discovering it showed her date of marriage as a couple of years earlier - but the husband's name was the same as the Publican's.  That's odd, is it his son?  Got the Code out - send off another Shuttle as if you hadn't done the first one.  Also another Shuttle for the chap, to see if they'd missed the date of divorce off his original one.  OK.  Same result.

At which point I had to hand it over to an EO (my boss) and send a Telegram to check again with RO.  Same result - and I had both files whisked off me, wasn't allowed to ask questions and nobody was allowed to tell me anything.  However, a bloke we knew well who'd worked in our office then came in to see Irene - he had applied to SIS for promotion and he was now an investigator based at Auchinlech House in Birmingham.

I have wondered ever since 1966 if he really WAS a bigamist - or what?


----------

