Taking The Medicine
Surveys repeatedly confirm that the main reason Britons like the idea of living in France is the quality and pace of life.
But here’s the curious thing: The French take more anti-depressant pills than the inhabitants of any other European country. To be fair, it may of course be that the natives are depressed by the statistics regarding the ever-growing number of Britons who live in their country… and the even more mind-boggling number who say they would love to adopt la vie francaise.
However, I have always believed that most stereotypes must have something going for them to have become stereotypes, and over the years it has seemed to me that the French do their best to live up to their reputation as a nation of hypochondriacs. Or perhaps it would be fairer to say that they enjoy all things connected with ill-health and its treatment more than most races.
Any nation whose people regularly visit their local pharmacy like the British go to their favourite pub must appear to have a healthy interest in ill-health. I have French friends who go to their nearest chemist almost on a daily basis, even where there is nothing wrong with them.
To understand this apparent idiosyncratic behaviour, you have to appreciate the differences between a British chemist shop and a French homeopathic pharmacy. In a typical chemist’s shop, you scurry in and out to have your prescription made up or buy some headache pills, and the surroundings and décor ( and usually the manner of the staff) are not intended to encourage you to linger.
In a typical small-town high street pharmacie, there will be soft lights and sometimes even soothing music, with television sets a to allow visitors to see the latest fashionable ailments and their cures. Some of these extended and very unsubtle adverts take the form of ongoing mini-dramas which are followed as keenly as TV soaps. In the average French pharmacy there will also be all sorts of interesting medical appliances and contraptions to tinker with, and easy chairs so those with the time to spare can relax and take in the action. So far I have not seen any enterprising managers selling popcorn or ice cream, but that is probably only because the French do not, as a rule, snack.
At the business end of the shop, there are usually privacy lines some distance from the counter, but they are usually ignored; if not, the patient and pharmacist will often raise their voices sufficiently for the case notes, symptoms and solutions to be heard at all points. Experienced observers will nod or frown at each suggestion of treatment, and there may even be a round of applause when the pharmacist has come up with a particularly inspired proposal.
But what really marks the difference is how many customers go in for one item and go out with much more. I can understand that in a supermarket or clothes shop, but in a pharmacy? The customer may have gone in for a corn plaster, but will often go out with a trolley load of impulse buys of anything from a kilo of throat pastilles to a prosthetic limb.
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I suppose another reason that the pharmacie is such a popular venue may be that a visit to the doctor can be so time-consuming, costly and confusing. I have spent many years observing this area of Gallic womb-to-grave community care, and concluded long ago that the French do not understand how their own health service works. And that includes medical practitioners and administrators, and especially those initially responsible for constructing an edifice which makes the Tower of Babel look minimalistic. In brief and very general, French citizens pay for their health care through a system of levies based on their age, situation, income and health. This will establish them on a sort of health care star rating level, which seems to govern how fast the ambulance will arrive when you have an accident. But, with (of course) a number of exceptions, they will still have to pay to see their doctor, then claim anything from seventy to a hundred percent of this cost back. This system also applied to foreign residents with all the right pieces of paper, but the system and process is naturally much more complicated.
So far I have generally avoided becoming embedded –or rather enmeshed-in the French health care system for resident aliens, but having infected a finger while cutting down a tree this summer, I called in to make my first appointment at the surgery in a nearby town.
To my surprise (makethat shock), the receptionist said the doctor could see me at noon. Assuming that he or she was either on a fasting regime or not French, I turned up at the stroke of lunchtime and found four other patients sitting glumly in the waiting room. After a while, a man with a nasty-looking boil on his nose enquired of an elderly lady when she was seeing the doctor, then asked the rest of us for our appointment times. In each case the answer was the same. We all had a date with Doctor Felix for noon, a time which was by now a mere memory.
An hour or so later, and it was my turn to be shown in to the good doctor’s examination room. The finger was looked at, anti-biotics prescribed, and a consulting fee of 22 euros politely required. When queried, the good doctor gave a small cough, then said cash would be most convenient. Peeling off the readies, I decided to get my money’s worth and told him I had put on at least ten kilos since stopping smoking earlier in the year. When I asked if I should try and lose some weight, he said it would be better if I did. But, as he continued with a fatalistic shrug, most sensible people would agree it was better to risk one’s health and life by putting too much good food in one’s mouth rather than too many cigarettes.
Looking at his watch, he said that he did not wish to be rude, but he had a table reserved at a rather good restaurant in town, and it was close to last orders. As it was obviously far too late for us to find a similarly obliging establishment, perhaps we would like to join him for a late luncheon?
We would and did, and thus established and ticked off reason 987 for living in rural France…