In Dalrymple’s column at The Oldie, called The Doctor’s Surgery, he reflects on the way that CT scanners, once viewed as miraculous, have become routine and unthinking tools in medicine, arguing that the loss of diagnosis by skilled examination has been replaced by over-reliance on machines:

A former colleague – in the hospital where I worked – called the scans to which patients are now routinely subjected ‘the answering machines’. This was not meant as a compliment to the technology.

Read the full column here.