Læknaneminn - 01.06.1965, Side 33

LÆKNANEMINN
SS
the equipment was old, whereas in
Britain the building was decrepit,
and the equipment was excellent.
Cancer of the stomach is by far
the commonest malignant disease,
Iceland shares this distinction with
Japan. One theory suggests that
smoked fish eaten in large quanti-
ties may be the cause. Heart
disease is common, with essential
hypertension and atheroscelerosis
high on the list. Mitral incom-
petence is the commonest cause of
congestive failure: but the condi-
tion is the result of dilation of the
mitral ring following left ventri-
cular enlargement, and not due to
valvular disease. The incidence of
myocardial infarction is about the
same as in this country. T.B. used
to be very common, but is now
almost unknown.
I was amused to find that all
the diagnoses are written in the
case notes in Latin. This was help-
ful to me, with my very limited
Icelandic. However, the standard
of Latin was deplorable, and the
agreements between words were
pretty loose. I remember
Pulmonary Embolous written down
as “Emb. Pulm.”. I asked what
the endings were, and it transpired
that nobody had ever written down
anything else except the abbrevi-
ated form. To appreciate my
interest in this problem one must
realise that Icelandic has a gram-
mar structure very like Latin,
with three genders, four cases,
special endings, etc.! So it was a
convenient way of teasing my
hosts.
There is a National health
service giving everyone free medi-
cal care (free that is if one does
not count the taxes paid towards
it — they are higher than in
Britain). The doctors are paid by
the Government, as in this
country. There is also an excellent
system operating, whereby
students all get the opportunity
to take work as locum housemen,
which is paid handsomely. I cal-
culated that a student working as
a houseman got paid about twice
as much as housemen here. How-
ever, don’t all rush to do your
house jobs in Iceland: the cost of
living is very high, and the Ice-
landic language is fiendishly
complicated.
Höfundur þessarar greinar, sem birt-
ist í Synapse, blaði læknanema í Edin-
borg, er skozkur stúdent, sem dvaldist
í stúdentaskiptum við Fjórðungssjúkra-
húsið á Akureyri haustið 1963.
Geðsjúklingurinn (við nýja
lækninn): .,Okkur líkar miklu bet-
ur við yður en fyrirrennara yðar“.
,.Nú, hversvegna þá?“ spyr lækn-
irinn hinn ánægðasti. „Jú, þér er-
uð alveg eins og einn af okkur“.
Rakarinn: „Hvernig stendur á
því, að þú ert svona skítugur á
höndunum?"
Lærlingurinn: „Það hefur bara
enginn beðið um hárþvott í dag.“
Á prófi: „Sjúklingurinn haltrar,
því að vinstri fóturinn er 8 cm
styttri en sá hægri. Hvað munduð
þér gera?“ „Ég hugsa, að ég
mundi líka haltra, herra prófes-
sor.“
Bandarískur tannlæknir, Horace
Brown, lét letra eftirfarandi á leg-
stein sinn: ÞESSA HOLU KVEIÐ
ÉG ALLTAF FYRIR AÐ FYLLA.