I am squeamish. A drop of blood, I can handle. Even watched the German pathologist/anatomist, Dr Gunther, sawing cadavers in half, and then into pieces on TV. Saw him decapitate one. But "saw" is the key word here. They were dead bodies. Cold. Frozen. Felt no pain. I could not stay in a room where, even on TV, a living person was being given the "saw" treatment. They may be sleeping, deep under anaesthetic, but they are alive. And I feel their pain. My wife is not like that. She has the stomach for it. Our friend, Juliet, is a major player at the National Hospital For Neurology And Neurosurgery in London and, she being friends with a surgeon or three, the occasional invitation to sit-in, actually to stand-in and watch from over the surgeon's shoulder during complicated, life-threatening/saving brain surgery, comes our way. It comes our way because Mrs Harley has herself studied Anatomy and Physiology, and they trust her not to faint. She's just home from a six hour operation involving the removal of a tennis ball-sized chunk - yes, tennis ball-sized! - of a man's brain. Epilepsy was his problem. Major problem. And, God willing, now his life will be considerably improved. I know perfectly well the skill involved in such a piece of surgical theatre, and am myself living proof of such skills (orthopaedic, not neurological, of course), but you won't be seeing me in there while they perform. The boys with the white coats would be summoned before the poor patient laid out before me had even had a chance to get settled in ga-ga land.

SH