Want the best possible medical care? Help yourself]

YOU MAY have noticed that the Government's health policy is to close down hospitals and start phasing out the NHS. This is because it wants us to rely more on our own resources. That's why I've asked Dr Self-Help to give advice on treating yourself.

What exactly is self-help?

Dr Self-Help: Just what you'd expect. Noticing you're ill, finding out what's wrong and curing yourself.

Gosh. How does that differ from ordinary medicine with a doctor?

It's much better. It cuts out the middleman - the doctor. And all those hours waiting at the hospital, all that travelling to and from the hospital, all the contact with ill people, all those unpleasant interviews with receptionists . . .

So you are your own doctor?

Yes.

But surely you don't know enough about medicine to be a doctor?

Nor do doctors. Doctors make mistakes all the time, and don't own up. At least you will own up to yourself when you make a mistake - and apologise, which no ordinary doctor will do. You won't work 80 hours at a stretch, like a junior hospital doctor, then give yourself the wrong medicine and kill yourself.

Do junior hospital doctors do that?

More often than you might think. It helps clear a hospital bed, you see.

I see.

But you won't need a hospital bed. You'll be at home, looking after yourself. So you won't be tempted to kill yourself.

But what if I don't know what's wrong with me? What if I fall ill and can't diagnose the trouble?

Most ailments clear up by themselves and go away. But if in doubt, you can get a second opinion.

Who from?

A doctor. There's no harm in getting a second opinion from a doctor. It's the first opinions that do all the damage.

How do I do that?

Phone your doctor and ask for advice. Doctors love treating people over the phone; they don't have to look people in the eye or sit up straight or stop picking their noses.

But I'm not very good at talking to the doctor.

That's the whole point about self-help] If you are your own doctor, you are dealing with someone you can trust and talk to. Someone who knows you really well.

It sounds a bit new-fangled to me.

On the contrary, it's one of the oldest and most trusted forms of medicine. Until 200 years ago, it was rare for anyone to go to a doctor. A lot of the aches and wheezes treated these days were not even deemed illnesses in the old days.

So there were fewer illnesses before we had doctors?

Absolutely] And remember, doctors will prescribe what they've been taught to prescribe. In China everything is cured by sticking needles into you. In France they put suppositories up you. In Britain they put pills down you. Illnesses are the same everywhere but doctors' methods differ. They can't all be right. Probably they are all wrong]

But there must be some things that self-help can't do. . .

Oh, sure. Brain operations and amputations are best left to surgeons. But apart from that. . .

Does medical self-help involve doing any operations on yourself?

Sure, especially if you live alone.

My God. What kind of operations can you do on yourself?

One of the hardest is putting a plaster on your right thumb. Say you've got a cut on the ball of your thumb - you dab on some Germolene and start looking for plasters. By the time you've found them and got Germolene all over the bathroom cupboards, you find it's not as easy as it looks to open a plaster box with one hand.

Why not use two?

Because your right thumb is out of action. Anyway, you select a plaster, pull those white bits off, which then stick to you, and you try to shake them off, which starts your thumb bleeding again, and you stick the plaster on, almost in the right place, but because no plaster is the right shape for the thumb, it ends up puckered and pleated, and then starts falling off.

Why?

Because it can't stick to the Germolene on your skin.

I think I'd rather go to the doctor.

Suit yourself. Next, please]