Installed in his first job in the poverty-stricken Welsh Valleys, young Dr Manson, the hero of AJ Cronin’s 1937 classic The Citadel is faced with a cluster of cases of typhoid. […]
Nick Hopkinson
Nick Hopkinson: Wellness, meaning, and control
“Being old enough to die is an achievement not a defeat, and the freedom it brings is worth celebrating.” From this striking vantage point, Barbara Ehrenreich, in her recent book […]
Nick Hopkinson: 120 beats per minute—living and dying and making a difference
“What is a good life? For a start, a good life is one that goes on long enough. A short life may be good while it lasts, may be a […]
Nick Hopkinson: There is much that still resonates in David Widgery’s writing
I remember my first night as a doctor, spent in St Andrew’s Hospital near the Bow flyover, watching anxiously for ectopic beats on the cardiac monitors until the nurses chased […]
Nick Hopkinson: Making sense of e-cigarettes—Public Health England’s review of the evidence
“I switched over to vaping but someone told me they were just as bad as cigarettes so I went back to smoking again.” A depressing thing to hear in a […]
Nick Hopkinson: Smoking in “The Crown”
A youthful Christine Keeler sits in custody refusing to answer questions, cigarette in hand. Season 2 of Netflix’s The Crown, culminates with the Profumo affair. It is 1963, six years […]
Nick Hopkinson: Your life in my hands—review
Andrew Lansley had his calamitous Health and Social Care Act 2012; Kenneth Clarke introduced the wasteful and destructive NHS internal market before going off to work for British American Tobacco; […]
Nick Hopkinson: The lungs in winter—helping the NHS to cope better with respiratory disease
Winter is here and with it the annual NHS winter crisis. Lung disease makes a substantial contribution to this, particularly in children and older people. Many respiratory illnesses are seasonal; […]
Nick Hopkinson: What we talk about when we talk about privatisation
It’s indisputable that privatisation is occurring in the NHS, so where does privatisation denial come from? […]
Nick Hopkinson: Chronic breathlessness syndrome—the power of a name
The recognition of a new clinical entity, “chronic breathlessness syndrome” has been proposed, following an international Delphi process to achieve an expert consensus.1 Why does this matter and is it […]