Why, as our technology gets better, does much of our human contact and understanding get worse? How does this happen in our publicly accountable healthcare, and what is its cost? This anthology draws from nearly forty years' writing that describes and dissects encounters on the frontline of the NHS. The complicated problems and situations are captured in language that is wry, lyrical and trenchant. Beneath the very wide range of subjects lie the basic questions of Welfare and social psychology: What do other people want and need? How do we (think we) know? Who decides, and how? This book's unusual perspectives challenge many of our now dangerously sleep-walked maxims.