Asking patients tricky personal questions – can Shakespeare help?

The GP whose practice I joined in 1971 gave me lots of good advice. One bit was that you should “always think the worst of your patients”.
We know that that patients don’t always tell the truth about how much they eat, how much alcohol they drink, how much they smoke.
However, most of us accept that the stated father of a child is … the father.
The following is a case from more than 20 years ago.