A healthy sign

It is early in our medical career that we become Grand Masters of the ‘spot diagnosis’. But it can take a little longer to spot signs of good health.

Before we graduate from medical school, as we go about our lives we are ‘spot-diagnosing’ patients. Waiting at the traffic lights, we spot the man with Parkinson’s disease who has stalled at the kerb and is unable to initiate the climb; the stooped woman with osteoporosis whose varus waddle advertises her osteoarthritis; and the child with the lazy eye who has the mydriatic pupil. After graduation, when a patient presents, we look for the pathology; health, it seems, is a diagnosis of exclusion.