The disorder in hospitals, as elsewhere, is the natural consequence of this kind of 'family' life; and anything that promotes this life also promotes disorder. The range of fiscal measures that might encourage more stable family relations is beyond the scope of this essay.

Finally, the law might usefully be invoked in those instances where it is broken, which is at present very rarely done. Threatening behaviour is against the law, but in the current climate it is virtually impossible to secure a conviction for it. The police argue that it is a minor offence, but the paperwork necessary to bring a prosecution is major. The Crown Prosecution Service, if it ever dealt with such a case, would argue that it was against the public interest to go to the expense of a prosecution, therefore de facto arguing that threatening behaviour is in the public interest. The same arguments are applied to minor assaults. Given the dialectical relationship between major and minor infringements of civilised conduct and of the law itself, it is hardly surprising that disorder results.

If anyone were prepared to enforce the laws, it would be useful to extend them to the prohibition of such activities as drinking alcohol in the streets and eating in the streets. Seriously to prohibit these habits would create a social atmosphere in which a person's desire of the moment was not the only thing he had to consider before deciding to behave in a certain way. The unconscious habit of consideration for others might then be re-instilled. As Francis Bacon sad, 'It is a poore centre of a man's life, himselfe.'

Disorder in hospitals - still a relatively minor, if growing, problem - is nevertheless a microcosm of many of our social problems. An examination of it takes us far afield, into the interconnected realms of ideas, family life and the law. In an increasingly fragmented world, in which ideas are presented as sound-bytes, it allows us to see the connections that do - or at any rate should - make up our social world.