Actu-Art 

2003 September "The Medicine Man"

    The fragility of Man and our High-tech Society has come to light after the latest summer events in France.

    From the medicine man to the public Health supermarket, the evolution that we thought irreversible and attached to Man’s service, has suddenly collapsed.

    The reasons are multiple :  profit and market rule, lack of anticipation, abuse and loss of sense due to the blindness of previous causes.

    The medicine man on the painting is tending a patient. Her nakedness refers to destitution. He takes care of the poor in the streets, faithful to Hypocrates’s Oath : “ Upon my Conscience, in front of my Masters and my fellow-students, I swear to practise Medecine according to the laws of Morals and Honour  and to use scrupulously all my duties by the ill, my fellow-members and Society”.

    It is probably on the same idea that the Social Health Service was born in France, an organ that shares the right to medical service for each citizen, a centre of a union for equal rights in the Health field.

    Such a great idea has been, for years and years, very badly managed and liable to contradictions, probably because it manipulates riches and groups of pressure that are remote  from its original purpose.

    Aren’t we facing again the problem of sharing riches and the planet’s resources, a sort of isomorphism that crops up as soon as profit  is concerned.

    “ Health has no  price”is often heard. Must a public service such as Health be codified instead of being shared ? Must it be divided between private and public fields?  Must it be used to make profit to the prejudice of the weakest people in Society?

    This is a real problem of sense that is set when more than 11000 old people pass away in a spell of excessive heat because the minimum attendance could not be given to them. The same problem is faced with the slack of nurses, beds, the price of  medical  material, medicine and so forth…

    In our Society of Consumption and individualism, are we still ready to share?

                                            Christian Bruon