Opinion – Front Line: Happy Doctor’s Day to those who follow the precepts of the profession

October 18th is Doctor’s Day in honor of São Lucas, a doctor loved in São Paulo’s words. First of all, I celebrate this date and greet my professional colleagues who, often without the best conditions, or opposing interests other than care, remain faithful to our art, based on ethical precepts since Hippocrates.

During the greatest crises that afflict humanity, such as pandemics, doctors are called upon to come forward. Among historical examples, I can highlight Guy de Chauliac, physician to the court of three different Popes in the city of Avignon, during the time of the Great Plague in the 14th century. At the most critical moment of death in that city, in 1498, Pope Clement VI and his entourage withdrew to the countryside, however Guy did not accept to accompany them, he remained there taking care of the sick and documenting their attendance. Guy was also infected, but luckily he survived and left us his masterpiece Surgery Magna, in which he quotes works by Avicenna, Galen and Hippocrates. Guy de Chauliac refuted the theses that attributed the spread of the plague to astral and religious phenomena and even blamed the Jews on the part of the authorities constituted with the support of sectors of the population.

Brazil also had its heroes in fighting major epidemics, I highlight the generation of Oswaldo Cruz, Vital Brazil, Adolpho Lutz and Emílio Ribas, who had leadership in fighting the plague that devastated the country in the transition from the 19th to the 20th century from of the ports of Santos and Rio de Janeiro, the efforts of these masters who combined the most advanced medical knowledge of the time to public health measures with the necessary political interventions left us, among other legacies, the institutes that bear their names, and which were fundamental in the face of our contemporary plague: Covid-19.

These references are necessary because they illuminate ethically and technically the exercise of our work. Even in the most difficult moments, without sufficient beds or resources, knowing that my life and, indirectly, the lives of my family members were at risk, I remembered Guy de Chauliac. If he didn’t withdraw from his patients, I wouldn’t either.

However, this conduct was not homogeneous among physicians. There were those who took opportunistic attitudes, taking advantage of a moment of fragility to offer false cures. The self-styled first-time coronavirus experts who prescribed and touted the fateful early treatments with malaria and worm drugs often resemble the mercenaries who performed similar services in the 14th century, the so-called Plague Doctors.

And who would be responsible for regulating the practice, namely the Federal Council of Medicine (CFM), was responsible for a first position of omission. They hid in their offices like many at the papal court in Avignon. They ignored the microbiological and epidemiological knowledge of those who built the foundations of the current Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, and the Butantã Institute, who offered us vaccines denied by the medical corporation and by the highest level of the Republic, the president himself.

At a later time, the apparent omission revealed an uncritical adherence to the Federal Government, illustrated today, when members of the CFM, claiming the celebration of Doctor’s Day, promoted a campaign act in favor of the president who called doctors slaves of the protocol , which endorsed the distribution of ineffective drugs, which left doctors without oxygen to assist their patients who died of asphyxiation. The council’s omission and adherence affront the heritage of Saint Luke, Hippocrates, Galen, Avicenna, Chauliac, Cruz, Lutz, Brazil and Ribas, medicine itself.

I wish a happy Doctor’s Day to those who continued to practice medicine based on the highest precepts of our profession, despite them that judge us and regulate our practices. History will judge them.