TY - JOUR T1 - Language Matters JF - British Journal of General Practice JO - Br J Gen Pract SP - 51 LP - 51 DO - 10.3399/bjgp20X707729 VL - 70 IS - 691 AU - Roger Jones Y1 - 2020/02/01 UR - http://bjgp.org/content/70/691/51.abstract N2 - The English poet Elizabeth Jennings has captured, with lucid, lyrical precision, her experiences of illness, both as a surgical and a psychiatric patient.1 In a series of eight poems called Sequence in a Hospital (1964), she evokes the isolation and terror that precedes surgery and, in Night Sister, describes the values of the healing art: β€˜ You have a memory for everyone; None is anonymous and so you cure. What few with such compassion could endure.’ In the poem A Mental Hospital Sitting Room from the book The Mind has Mountains (1966), Jennings writes with aching honesty about depression and madness: β€˜It is as if a scream were opened wide, a … ER -