ABSTRACT
Violence against doctors is on the rise, with murders making the news. In the United States, it's the terminators; in Australia, three GPs have been murdered in the last decade. A video player spun out a health-education lesson at top volume, because people tended to be hard of hearing and there was a lot of noise. Eddie sat in the consulting room with his mouth around a spirometer. Reduced lung functions due to chronic infections, smoking, petrol sniffing and inhalation of smoke from campfires - or a combination of the above - was not unusual. World-view issues surface regularly. The same addiction caused the death of another brother, to whom Young Edward was closest, while the teenager was in prison 500 kilometres away for grievous bodily harm. Young Edward's home life was full of sorry business, violence and poverty.
