German doctors go naked for lack of PPE

German doctors go naked for lack of PPE

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norman lebrecht

April 29, 2020

There’s a growing outcry among general practitioners in Germany about the Government’s failure to provide protective equipment.

They’ve launched a naked protest here.

Alarming, albeit lacking the designer style of our protesting French dentists.

It seems that more dentists than doctors became composers. The only composer-physicians we can find are Hildegard of Bingen, Thomas Campion and Albert Schweizer. Who are we missing?

Comments

  • John Nemaric says:

    You missed our dearly departed (on June 6, 2019) Dr. John. Famous composer, song writer and singer from New Orleans.

  • Ron Swanson says:

    Borodin worked as a Doctor and was a research chemist. Composition was his hobby. Not a bad C.V.

  • Gustavo says:

    Why are they blaming politicians and putting themselves and their patients at risk (by going starkers) given the Hippocratic Oath?

    “I swear by Apollo Physician, by Asclepius, by Hygieia, by Panacea, and by all the gods and goddesses, making them my witnesses, that I will carry out, according to my ability and judgment, this oath and this indenture.
    To hold my teacher in this art equal to my own parents; to make him partner in my livelihood; when he is in need of money to share mine with him; to consider his family as my own brothers, and to teach them this art, if they want to learn it, without fee or indenture; to impart precept, oral instruction, and all other instruction to my own sons, the sons of my teacher, and to indentured pupils who have taken the physician’s oath, but to nobody else.
    I will use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment, but never with a view to injury and wrong-doing. Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course. Similarly I will not give to a woman a pessary to cause abortion. But I will keep pure and holy both my life and my art. I will not use the knife, not even, verily, on sufferers from stone, but I will give place to such as are craftsmen therein.
    Into whatsoever houses I enter, I will enter to help the sick, and I will abstain from all intentional wrong-doing and harm, especially from abusing the bodies of man or woman, bond or free. And whatsoever I shall see or hear in the course of my profession, as well as outside my profession in my intercourse with men, if it be what should not be published abroad, I will never divulge, holding such things to be holy secrets.
    Now if I carry out this oath, and break it not, may I gain for ever reputation among all men for my life and for my art; but if I break it and forswear myself, may the opposite befall me.” – Translation by W.H.S. Jones

  • BellDummy says:

    Why is it that degeneracy always works?

    (Is it so attractive, that it even gets space on a music-page?)

  • sam says:

    since when do Germans need an excuse to go naked?

  • John Borstlap says:

    It was mainly 20C composers who came from the tooth drill profession, because of the effect their exercises had, in both field, on people who happened to be on the receiving end. But that was a characteristic common to most 20C art which called itself modern, avantgarde, groundbreaking, progressive etc. etc. Enjoying it, is for people with some residu of aesthetic perception the type of enjoyment of many hours in a dentist’s chair from which you cannot escape:

    https://www.futuresymphony.org/admit-it-you-really-hate-modern-art/

  • Dave says:

    You forgot Dr Teeth, but he’s a muppet of course. A career as a politician would have been a perfect fit.

  • Enquiring Mind says:

    Looking at the pics, I have to ask why are the ugly ones always so willing to take off their clothes when no one is asking?

  • Michael Wilkinson says:

    Giuseppe Sinopoli was both doctor and composer.

  • John Rook says:

    And the point of looking at naked lard buckets was, er, remind me again…?

  • John Rook says:

    It reminds me of a comment in a magazine a few years back: ‘If you ask a German for a golden shower, he will urinate on you. Quite frankly, nothing these people do surprises me anymore.’

  • Stephen from Buffalo says:

    For what it’s worth, one sign at the big demonstration in NYC as George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq was imminent [referencing Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s dismissal of opinions emanating from countries like France and Germany]: “Old Europeans Make Better Lovers”.

  • Una says:

    Bruce Duffie from Chicago was just in touch with me to say that composer Paul Ramsier was also a trained psychiatrist – assuming it is classed as a physician in UK as it is in the US. I suppose we’d say a doctor –

    http://www.bruceduffie.com/ramier.html

    And the conductor Sinopoli – whether he composed or not, I don’t know – was also a psychiatrist –

    http://www.bruceduffie.com/sinopoli.html

    Here are Bruce’s interviews that went out on WNIB Classical 97 in Chicago, and which are getting typed up by myself – in case any of you are interested. Make for good reading and always so informative!

  • Edgar Self says:

    Good information, Una, thanks. During Giuseppe Sinopoli’s short life it was said of him that he was the best conductor among the psychiatrists, and the best psychiatrist among conductors, which I hope included the psychoanalysis of his colleagues, a fascinating sub-species.

    • Brian says:

      Sinopoli was one of the greatest conductors i have ever seen and i have seen the
      The legends Klemperer Bernstein Karajan etc. His passing was a shock

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