Hearing voices
Modern miracles at Lourdes are a bit underwhelming, writes Maurice Gueret ,as he dissects the strange case of Peter Rabbit and the shooting blackberry
Bracing Tale
The heathen in me is a little underwhelmed at modern miracles from Lourdes. The latest case comes five years after an Italian lady had her blood pressure controlled by a future saint. Now, don’t get me wrong. I am pleased that a French nun with a bad back for over 40 years is now pain-free and can lead a perfectly normal life. I’m puzzled, though, about the story of her body heating up and a strange voice telling her to take off her equipment. It might have been me. The equipment was a kind of corset or girdle, accompanied by braces and leg splints. These sort of remedies were popular in the era of Downton
Abbey. The day after all her equipment was removed, Sister Bernadette managed a three-mile hike through a forest. I should think anyone would enjoy freedom from such ancient contraptions. It’s good to question these claims, though it’s not for me to judge. Pontification on modern miracles is the job of a carefully chosen panel of doctors and bishops of a certain faith. They haven’t engaged my independent services just yet.
Medical Stamp
I was whiling away an hour on DoneDeal the other night, when I came across a nice set of Irish stamps featuring that well known and heavily armed General Practitioner, Dr Che Guevara. The four stamps had a face value of one euro each, and the asking price was €15 for the lot. There’s capitalism for you! They were released by that radical countercultural body, An Post, last year, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Dr Che’s brutal execution. It’s a while since I collected stamps, and I am trying to remember other doctors who have been honoured by the GPO on Irish stamps. Rebel doctor Kathleen Lynn did feature on a set of Easter Rising stamps issued two years ago. But I think we missed a trick in 2015, which was the 100th anniversary of Noel Browne’s birth in Waterford. If there are any revolutionaries still standing on O’Connell Street, 2022 would be the 25th anniversary of Dr Browne’s passing. Seeing as his fellow politicians will never name a hospital after him, I can’t think of a better way to commemorate somebody who left a stamp on our health services.
Blackberry Allergy
The new Peter Rabbit film is causing a storm Beatrix Potter mightn’t have anticipated. Patient groups have called for us to boycott the movie because of a scene where Peter and his fellow bunnies fire blackberries into the mouth of arch-enemy Mr McGregor, setting off a nasty allergic reaction. The fluffy-tailed villains were quite deliberate in their targeting, knowing that Old McGregor’s weak spot was a tendency to go into anaphylactic shock in the presence of blackberries. Readers of the original text will know that there was a motive for the attempted murder of Mr McGregor. Many years before, McGregor’s wife served Peter Rabbit’s father up in a tasty pie after he was found munching his way through her husband’s vegetable patch. I’m of two minds about the call for a boycott. The film studio are correct to apologise for the insensitivity of using somebody’s allergy to inflict harm on them. But it could also be argued that the film improves public knowledge of the life-saving device known as the EpiPen. This auto-injector of adrenaline saves not only Mr McGregor, but thousands of gardeners and non-gardeners worldwide every year.
Food Intolerant
Long-standing readers know my views on the pointlessness of finger-prick food-intolerance tests at pharmacies. It is a very long time since our neighbours in Britain stopped promoting these tests. Well at long last, something has been done here. The HPRA, which regulates health products in Ireland, has now stated that these tests cannot diagnose food-intolerance conditions, and advises the public not to act on test results without expert advice from their doctor or registered dietician. Many pharmacies in Ireland refused to go along with these tests. They are to be commended. But will the chains and stores that did promote them be asked to refund the large test fees that were paid over? The Pharmaceutical Society of Ireland, which regulates chemist shops, has warned pharmacies to stop providing these tests in the future. I believe they could go further and see what can be done for all the patients who swallowed the spiel about these tests in the first place.