Popsicles provide cheap, sweet and gooey gratification, while hospitals are the symbols of our expensive, bitter and hard civilization. They represent science, progress, and Big Pharma. Hospitals provide beds since they take resting and healing very seriously. The cleaning lady also takes her job very seriously, appearing at 5.30 A.M, turning on the lights and starting to clean with a clatter not unlike a wild hockey game. By this time, exhausted by night hospital noises, snoring and sleepwalking, patients have almost managed to go back to sleep. As the morning noises die down, morning examinations and breakfast begins.
Since a weakened body needs good nutrition, hospital food is unfit for human consumption. The idea behind this is that patients be fed by their relatives, having to come and visit every day. Not counting the additional mission of making the overweight population lose weight.
Hospitals are very orderly and strict. Since sterility equals healing, surfaces are sterile with a sterile glimmer reflecting on sterile faces. It is well known that bitter medicine has curing properties, therefore great care is being taken to make hospitals unhospitable. Examinations and procedures are scary, painful, disgusting, dangerous, or any combination of the above. According to some cranks the main aim of this institution is to make staying so uncomfortable that people will want to get out as quickly as possible. This cunning ploy leaves no option beside rapid healing. A hasty departure is indeed wise as most hospitals have indigenous strains of pathogenic bacteria, being particularly dangerous places for weakened bodies.
There are three main humanoids in hospitals: patients, nurses and doctors. The latter are actually gods in a human body whose words are sacred. They are quite similar to Greek gods in that they tend to disagree with each other about treatment. They always wear white laboratory gowns and move with a peculiar, hurried doctor gait quite unlike the movement of ordinary mortals. Phonendoscope wrapped around their neck like the snake of medicine they carry around a cloud of chemical smells. This is completely unlike the shamans of old, superstitious times, who wore colorful robes carrying around a cloud of incense. White gowns are not worn to give a ghostly resemblance to angels, but to give maximum visibility to spilled bodily fluids. The phonendoscope is a symbol of magical power while the odor of chemicals signals a connection with higher beings.
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Since hospitals are bastions of the war against disease, its gods are war gods. As on Olympus, there is a strict hierarchy of ranks. Interns are cadets, fellows are sub-lieutenants, the chief physician is a colonel, and the hospital's chief physician is a general of the army. Nurses represent the non-commissioned officers, clearly illustrated by their manners. The privates are the orderlies, lift attendants, porters, but, just as in the epic novel The Paul Street Boys in this theatre of war privates are an insignificant minority.
Who else was there? Oh yes, I almost forgot. Patients. They are the territory where the war unfolds. Once someone’s been sent to a hospital, they immediately become patients, i.e. ’sufferers’. Someone once suggested that they could also be called ’recoverers’ but this is wrong. If they are already healing they should go back to work. Just let them patiently suffer everything the hospital gods cast upon them. Patients doing the healing instead of doctors… What kind of crazy idea is that?
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Among patients there is a strict caste system, with paying patients at the top. Next come doctors admitted to a hospital, the third class is made up of doctors' relatives, with the rest being untouchables. Caste, however, has no bearing on the communication between patients, who very casually discuss operations, complications, urinations, hemorrhoids and false eyelashes. Hospital rooms are where you truly come to understand why society is where it is and what kind of people read the National Enquirer.
As to the War on Germs, hospitals consider the destruction of tiny creatures to be one of their main missions. Saint Semmelweis said: kill germs till they’re dead! Some new-age dreamers will surely object arguing that, after all, the vast majority of bacteria living in humans are beneficial. Okay, but what if some of them are harmful? One cannot be too safe! Unprofessional critics would argue that we could, for example, be more selective with the killing. Like when using an eraser you only erase the misspelled words, not the whole text. Whining germophiles and other ignorant dolts should not, however, interfere with the medical profession. Besides, the chemical industry also has to make a living. We kill insects and wild plants in the fields by spraying. We kill fish in rivers with industrial effluent. Why shouldn’t we exterminate those creatures from our very bodies that still manage to hang on after eating all the processed food? This would obviously not be fair, moreover, we’d be healthier and then what would we do with all the drugs? Fortunately, pharmaceutical companies think of everything. They are now selling powdered bacteria to replace the bacteria that are killed by their drugs so we can get even more healthy.
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Everyone who is admitted to hospital is given a daily cocktail of drugs which is like a personal I.D, a kind of admittance to the community of sufferers. Also, pharmaceutical companies need to recover the funds they invested in medical training. Interestingly, toxic chemicals administered to people already unwell are called medicines. The Turkish language goes further, extending the name ’medicine’ to agricultural herbicides, insecticides and fungicides. Maybe we could learn a thing or two from those Turks, after all, they had almost managed to conquer Europe.
The ten-page leaflet that comes with every prescription drug listing all the symptoms in the world as possible side effects and instructing you not to eat the ointment also warns you to keep the stuff out of the reach of children. Simple-minded people might suggest that perhaps we should also keep drugs out of the reach of adults in order to have a healthier population. But Big Pharma, the flagship of our civilization, cannot be bypassed so easily. Moreover, if the population was healthier there would be a greatly reduced need for hospitals. And the degree of development of a country is measured by the number of hospital beds per 10 000 inhabitants. The idea probably being that in a real bad pandemic all should fit inside.
One of the highlights of the day in hospital is doctors’ morning round, which is like holy mass, except the ceremony is more genuine since they still speak Latin. This occasion serves for the grand vizier, excuse me, the high priest, pardon me, the chief physician to proclaim the word and for patients to see how much the lower priests respect the high priest. All this serves to demonstrate that the high priest is all-knowable and you are in an important urgent emergency.
“You’re able to walk!” Artwork by Rontó Lili from the book: Gyógyító szavak (Healing Words)
The other highlight of the day is supper, because no one gets tortured after supper. The third highlight is being visited by your friends and family. When the friends and family of False Eyelashes Jennifer turn up from the gipsy village, dumping a pile of coats on your bed and sitting on your belly, well, it's a slightly different experience, but at least you don't have to be ashamed of your moaning as no one can hear your in the cacophony.
Most people in our civilization are born in a hospital which says a lot about our state of health.
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Most people also die in a hospital. This amazing state of affairs could still be improved by also spending the period between birth and death in hospital. This solution would save society a great deal of resources. Only those whose job absolutely requires going out, such as paramedics, would have to leave bed during the day. The rest of us could spend the whole day in bed punching away on our keyboards. In the evenings, everyone could watch a hospital soap opera except for artsies for whom there's Lars von Trier's early TV series, The Kingdom. Everyone would have a bed, a bedside table, a coughing roommate, an under-the-blanket urinal and a fever chart with no need to spend money on an alarm clock or a cleaning lady. The resulting bedsores and nervous breakdowns could be treated on the spot while flat feet would become permanently eliminated, a giant step towards a healthy society.