If symptoms
persist.. .
THE OPINION of their patients notwithstanding, doctors sometimes need a rest, so I decided to go to Venice for a few days. This meant, of course, that I missed the Fifteenth International Festival of Mind, Body and Spirit at the Royal Agricultural Halls, which I should otherwise have attended, but of late my patients had been exasperating me even more than usual, so I was not altogether sad to exchange lectures entitled 'Dis- cover Your Natural Voice and Sing Your Stress Away,' Healing the Wound- ed Woman', 'Find Your Dream Through Didgeridoo and Dance', 'Mind Over Metal', 'It's Never Too Late to Have a Happy Childhood' and 'Have Fun at Your Own Death' for the Accademia and the Café Florian (where I write this, under the eye of a very superior waiter).
I joined the cultured travellers bound for la Serenissima at the airport; there were definitely no lager louts among them, though quite a few in white linen suits and panama hats. It is never long, however, before the thoughts of even the most cultured person turn to disease and dissolution, and I could not but overhear
the conversation of the two ladies next to me on the plane. They certainly knew their Bellinis (the painters, not the drink) from their Giorgione, but one of them had an 83-year-old friend with many medical complaints, which were described in considerable clinicopatho- logical detail.
`I asked her to come to Paris with me, but she said to me, "My dear, I'm far too old to come to France. What would hap- pen to me if I had a fall?" I said to her, "Darling, don't worry, if you fall down, the French'll pick you up"?
Being a doctor, I went straight on my arrival to Santa Maria della Salute (or St Mary of Health, as it is called, somewhat less euphoniously, in English). This splendid church, full of Titians, was built as a thanksgiving offering after the deliv- erance of the city from the plague of 1630, which killed about a third of the population. The remaining two thirds were grateful to have survived, which to the modern mind is an odd way of look- ing at things: these days, if you want piety about matters of health, you have to read the publications of the World Health Organisation, with their fatuous invocations to Health For All by the Year 2000. And in our century, Santa Maria della Salute would have been aborted by the distribution of tetracy- cline, at a fraction of a penny per pill.
To whom or to what shall we erect a temple when a vaccine or a cure for Aids is found? Our medical hubris prevents both resigned acceptance of what cannot be cured and gratitude for what can. When Aids is conquered, the sale of con- doms will decline, c'est tout. But if by any chance we do decide to build a monu- ment of thanksgiving, we could do worse than engage the painter of one of the Annunciations in Santa Maria della Salute which, according to the guide- book, contains 'the long-limbed figure of the Astonished Virgin'. The artist was Pietro Liberi, known as Libertini.
Theodore Dalrymple
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