![\"Richard](\"http:\/\/www.bmj.com\/site\/blog\/icons\/bmjh7648e.jpg\")
On Christmas Day 1976 I kissed 500 women. All of them were over 70 and institutionalised, and one was either dead or killed by my kiss.<\/p>\nOn Christmas Day 1976 I kissed 500 women. All of them were over 70 and institutionalised, and one was either dead or killed by my kiss.<\/p>\n
I was a houseman, working in the Eastern General in Edinburgh, close to the city\u2019s inadequate sewerage works. The hospital was built in 1906 by Leith Parish Council as both a poor house and hospital. It\u2019s now demolished, a site beside the sea for luxury flats.<\/p>\n
By 1976 the poor house had become a geriatric hospital, full to the brim with the decrepit and the demented housed in Nightingale wards. It must have been a tradition for the youngest male doctor to get dressed as Father Christmas, scarlet red with a hat and white beard, and tour the geriatric hospital. It certainly wasn\u2019t an idea that occurred to me, or perhaps it was\u2014memory is so fickle.<\/p>\n
Anyway I went about it with gusto. I ho hoed and moved rapidly through the female wards kissing everybody with enthusiasm. I probably cracked jokes, bad ones no doubt. I can\u2019t remember if I was distributing presents. Perhaps my kiss was the present. Some of the women may have been pleased. Some were probably revolted. I kissed on regardless. Probably I was efficiently spreading infection.<\/p>\n
I can\u2019t remember any men. But in those poor houses turned geriatric hospitals gender was far from clear. Perhaps I kissed men too.<\/p>\n
What I do remember clearly is after finishing my kissing round I was called back to pronounce a woman dead. What I don\u2019t know is whether she was dead when I kissed her or whether my kiss killed her. And if my kiss killed her did she die joyous or appalled?<\/p>\n