The Modern Doctor

When I'm sick and I let out feeble meows, French friends suggests I pop some pills which I can obtain from one of the many pharmacies planted on the streets of my quartier, taking up valuable tree space (I think for every chemist in the 18th arrondissement there should be at least one park). For a common garden variety flu – bed rest, sans medication, is my usual solution.

However, when I’m not sick with the flu or a cold, I go to see doctors a lot. I guess I might be what you call a hypochondriac. But don't worry, I’m “out”. I’ve admitted to the world that I am
one. I've been like this since I was a kid. I used to watch this Australian tv show called A Country Practice (mainly because I was a fan of the dashing doctor played by Grant Dodwell) but whatever disease they focused on that week, I’d come down with it the next week: alzheimers, cat scratch fever, you name it, i'd be manifesting signs of it before you could say "Larry". Reading 19th novels didn’t help either – if we count the amount of times I’ve diagnosed myself with scarlet fever, tuberculosis and scurvy.

I've given up googling symptoms of illnesses, that's a start. But today I decided to see if I could find a cure for hypochondria so I looked at what The Modern Family Doctor (1928) had to say about hypochondriacs. It says that:

If the minds of these patients are deeply probed they can be found to have had all healthy inclinations starved and withered, and to be like unweeded gardens in which envy, hatred, malice, and spite have been allowed to flourish, and they are so self-absorbed that there is no room for outside interests. These patients have no kindliness of heart, no love of country and no generosities, and if they have any friends at all they have no real affection for them....history for him [Sic] has no meaning, and literature no existence...

That got me angry, because if anything exists for me it is literature.

Anyway, the Modern Family Doctor's solution was to take up religion.

Once when I went to a doctor in France and produced my petit papier with my lists of symptoms, the doctor looked at me with scorn, felt the beat of my unkindly heart, and gave me a healthy reprimand telling me to go forth and live, or at least weed my unruly garden.

But my current doctor is a dear about it. I went to see him recently for a tiny
white spot which had set up camp on my face.

"So you see I’m here because of this white spot. It’s probably just a pimple."

He takes out a little light and looks at it “yes, it’s just a pimple”.

Embarrassed pause where we both realise there’s nothing left to say and I’m gonna have to hand him 25 euros for telling me I have a pimple.

But he’s a resilient old thing, so he quickly whipped out a pen and drew a picture of the pimple, adding detailed pus and started to explain to me about sebum. That took about 50 seconds so then he added a little bit more detail. He drew my fingers squeezing the pimple and says “see if you squeeze it like that, it takes longer to go away”.

Then he screwed up the drawing and threw it in the bin and I went home to read
some literature, feeling a hell of a lot better.