![\"\"](\"http:\/\/healthicine.org\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/Janitor-300.jpg\")
<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nFeeling a hand on his shoulder, he turned around and saw a short elderly man, with a broom in his other hand. On his shirt, he wore a patch with the red cross clinic logo. Smiling, he looked at the stranger, who anxiously asked,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cExcuse me, is the hospital closed?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve been only a short time in this country?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI have a disease, C\u2013, I must be cured immediately.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s clear you don\u2019t know what\u2019s going on. What you should do right now is look for lodging in that inn,\u201d the janitor pointed to a strange windowless ash colored building with the look of a prison.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
\u201cBut, I don\u2019t want lodging. I need a cure in the clinic.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cRent a room immediately, if there is one left. In case you can get one, take it by the month. It will be cheaper and you get better attention.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAre you crazy? I must cure my C\u2013, immediately.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFrankly, I ought to leave you to your fate. But just the same, I\u2019ll give you some advice.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cPlease do\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis country is famous for its cures, as you know. Up to now, it\u2019s been impossible to organize them properly, but great progress has been made in publishing diagnostic protocols and issuing treatment recommendations. Medical reference texts include and link all the possible diseases in the country and sell prescriptions for every one, even the most obscure. Now all that is needed is for the clinics to make cures available as needed and as prescribed. The inhabitants of this country hope this will happen, meanwhile, they accept the service\u2019s small irregularities and their patriotism prevents them from showing any displeasure.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBut is there a cure for C– in this city?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cTo say yes would not be accurate. As you can see, the clinic exists, though in very bad shape. In some towns, there are simply marks on the ground with chalk lines, indicating where the clinic will be built. Given the present conditions, no cures are obliged to be found here, although nothing keeps them from occurring. I\u2019ve seen many cures in my life, and I\u2019ve known some patients who managed to acquire them. If you want to wait for the right moment, perhaps I will have the honor of helping you get a beautiful and comfortable one.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWill it cure my C\u2013?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhy do you insist it has to be for that disease? You should be satisfied to find a cure. Once cured, your life will take on some direction. What does it matter if this cure is not for C\u2013?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBut my diagnosis is C\u2013. Logically, I should get a cure for my disease, don\u2019t you agree?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMost people would say you are right. Around the inn, you can talk to people who have taken precautions, even acquiring huge quantities of cures. As a rule, people with foresight buy cures to all of the diseases in the country. There are some who have spent a real fortune on cures.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI thought, that to cure my C\u2013, one cure was enough. You see \u2014\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe next stretch of the national medical system is going to be built with the money of a single person who has just spent his immense capital on complete cures with medicines and procedures that haven\u2019t even been approved by the government.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBut, the cure for my C\u2013, is it available?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cNot only that. In reality, there are very many cures in the nation, and patients can use them frequently, but taking into account that it\u2019s not a formal and definitive service. In other words, when entering a clinic, nobody expects to cure the disease they have.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHow is that?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIn its eagerness to serve the citizens, the management sees itself needing to take desperate measures. They make cures for incurable diseases. These speculative cures can take several years and in that time the patient\u2019s lives undergo important transformations. Deaths are not unusual in such cases, but the management, foreseeing everything, attaches a funeral home and cemetery to every clinic. It is with pride that the doctors depositing the body of a patient, luxuriously embalmed, at the clinic that prescribed the cure. Occasionally, these clinics are compelled to operate on sites where the foundation is missing. As one side of the clinic shudders on the unstable ground and the beds shake. The rich patients \u2013 another instance of the management\u2019s foresight \u2013 are positioned on the stable side of the building. Those with health insurance suffer with resignation. But there are other clinics with no stable foundation at all, and all the patients suffer equally until the clinic is completely wrecked.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cDear God!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cListen, the village of F\u2014came into being because of one of those incidents. The clinic was built in an abandoned suburb of impassable terrain, between a rock and a hard place, and as it settled the floors broke down. The patients had spent such a long time together that from the obligatory trivial conversations, friendships sprang up. Some of those friendships soon became pleasing and the result is F\u2014a progressive town filled with mischievous children playing in the rusty vestiges of the clinic.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMy God. I\u2019m not made for such adventures.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou need to pluck up your courage: perhaps you might even become a hero. Do not think there aren\u2019t occasions for the patients to show their courage and capacity for sacrifice. On one occasion, two hundred anonymous patients wrote one of the most glorious pages in the medical annals. It happened with a new disease, when a doctor noticed a serious omission in the cure. A treatment necessary to arrest the disease was missing. The doctor, instead of panicking, gave the patients a pep-talk, getting the necessary placebo effect to move everything forward. Under his forceful direction, the sick patients were able to use their belief to take the epidemic apart, piece by piece, and cross the abyss, which held a further surprise \u2013 a raging fever. The end result of the cure was so satisfactory that management renounced the search for a cure, only to go so far as to reduce the cost of treatments and placebos for patients who dared face such a disease.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBut I must be cured. Tomorrow!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cVery well! I\u2019m glad to see you aren\u2019t giving up your project. It\u2019s plain to see that you are a man of conviction. Stay at the inn, for the time being, and take the first cure that comes. At least try to: a thousand people will be there to prevent it. When a cure comes in, the patients, exasperated by waiting too long, stream tumultuously out of the inn and noisily invade the clinic. Frequently causing accidents with their incredible lack of courtesy and prudence. Instead of entering in an orderly fashion, they devote themselves to crushing one another; at least; they keep each other from accessing the cure, which leaves them piled up in the entrance. The patients, exhausted and furious, curse their lack of education and spend a lot of time hitting and insulting each other.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAnd the police don\u2019t intervene?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt has been tried to organize a police force for each clinic, but the cures unpredictable arrivals made such a service useless and very expensive. Besides, the members of the force soon showed their dishonesty, only letting wealthy passengers, who gave them everything they had, enter the clinics. Then a special kind of school was established where future patients receive lessons in social distancing etiquette and with adequate training so they can spend their lives in the clinics. They are taught the correct way to enter the clinic before it is too busy and crowded. They are given masks to protect their noses, shields to protect their faces, and a special kind of armor to prevent other patients from cracking their ribs.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBut once in the clinic, are there many more difficulties?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cRelatively speaking, yes. I only recommend that you look very carefully at the clinics. You might think they have a cure for C\u2013, and it was only an illusion. In order to regulate life on the overcrowded hospitals, the management has been obliged to take certain expediencies. There are clinics that are for appearance only; they have been built right in the city and called the name of some important corporation. But you just need to pay a little attention to see through the deceit. They are like theatre sets, and the people filling them are mannequins stuffed with sawdust. These dolls easily betray the ravages of bad weather, but sometimes they are a perfect image of reality: their faces bear the signs of infinite weariness.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFortunately, my disease, C\u2014is not difficult to cure.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBut we don\u2019t, at this moment, have any cures. Nevertheless, it could well happen that you attain a cure tomorrow, just as you wish. The organization of the clinics, although deficient, doesn\u2019t exclude the possibility of a direct cure. You see, there are people who don\u2019t even realize what is going on. They buy a prescription for C\u2014. And the medicine comes, and they take it, and the next day, they hear the doctor announce \u2018We\u2019ve cured C\u2013 \u2019 Without making sure, the patients go out and find themselves effectively cured.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cCould I do something to facilitate that result?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOf course, you can. What you do not know is if it will help you. Try it anyway. Get to the clinic with the firm idea that you are going to cure C\u2013. Don\u2019t talk with any of the passengers. They could be disillusioned with their own medical stories and they might even denounce you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhat are you saying?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBecause of the present state of affairs, the clinics are full of spies. These spies, mostly volunteers, dedicate their lives to fostering the constructive spirit of the company. Sometimes, one doesn\u2019t know what one is saying, and talks just to be talking. But they immediately see all the meanings in a phrase, however simple it might be. For the most innocent comment, they know how to make it look guilty. If you were to commit the slightest imprudence, you would be apprehended without further ado: you could spend the rest of your life in a prison hospital. Do not let them force you to leave to a false clinic, lost out in the suburbs. Travel full of faith, consume the smallest possible amount of food, and don\u2019t step out of the clinic until you see and know the cure of C\u2013.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBut I don\u2019t know what the cure looks like.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIn this case, take double precautions. There will be, I assure you, many temptations on the path. If you look out the windows, you might fall into the trap of a mirage. The windows are equipped with ingenious devices that create all kinds of illusions in the patient\u2019s minds. Don\u2019t make the mistake to be weak to fall for them. Certain apparatuses, operated from the offices, make you believe, because of the noise and movement, that the cure is progressing. Nevertheless, the disease stands still for whole weeks at a time, while the patients looking through their windows see captivating activities passing by.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAnd what is the purpose?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAll this is done by the management with the healthy purpose of reducing the anxiety of the patients and, as far as possible, the sensations of disease. It is hoped that one day they are delivered, completely at random, into the hands of the omnipotent management, and no longer care where their disease is going, or where it came from.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAnd you, have you been cured a lot in the clinics?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI, Sir am only just a janitor. To tell the truth, I\u2019m a retired janitor, and I just come here now and then to remember the good old days. I\u2019ve never been cured, nor do I want to be. But the patients tell me stories. I know that the clinics have created many towns besides F\u2013, whose origin I told you about. It happens sometimes, that the staff at a clinic receives mysterious orders. They invite the patients to leave the clinic, usually on the pretext that they admire the beauty of the sunshine, of parks, of beautiful walks, and brilliant blue lakes. \u2018Fifteen minutes to admire such-and-such a scene,\u2019 says the nurse kindly. Once the patients are a certain distance away, the clinic disappears in the mist.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAnd the patients?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThey wander about, bewildered from one spot to another for a while, but they end up by getting together and establishing a colony. These parks are sometimes made in adequate places far from the city, but with adequate resources and sufficient natural riches. There, selected lots are abandoned, of young people and especially an abundant number of women. Wouldn\u2019t you not like to end your days in a picturesque unknown spot in the company of a young girl?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The old janitor winked, and stared at the patient with mischief, smiling and full of kindness. At that moment, a distant noise was heard. The janitor gave a leap, full of restlessness, and began fidgeting with his red cross patch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIs the clinic opening?\u201d he asked the janitor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The elderly janitor ran wildly down the sidewalk. When he was a certain distance he turned to shout, \u201cYou\u2019re lucky. Tomorrow will cure your famous disease. What did you say it was called?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cO\u2014,\u201c replied the patient.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At that moment, the old man vanished in the clear morning. The red cross on his uniform kept running and leapt imprudently into the clinic. In front of the patient, the clinic opened wide with a noisy celebration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014-<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Background: In my Spanish lessons, I chose to translate the story El Guardagujas<\/a> by Mexical writer Juan Jos\u00e9 Arreola. I did the first translation, dictionary in hand, and was very confused. I did a second translation, and managed to figure out the basics of the story. The next day, I worked again on the translation with my teacher \u2013 who was very confused and did not like the story I had chosen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gradually, as I began to understand the confabulario presented by Juan Jos\u00e9 Arreola, I saw an alignment with our current medical system \u2013 which markets the concept of \u2018cure\u2019 extensively but instead sells preventatives and treatments \u2013 with little indication of direction and little hope of actually curing. Cured \u2013 like many of the destinations in the original story, simply does not exist in our modern medical system for most diseases. Everyone is looking for a cure, but none can recognize one if it is encountered, cured being undefined. After a few weeks, I found an English translation of the <\/a>story, and set about transforming it to a medical setting. I have enhanced it with different phrases or ideas, but wanted to stick to the original concept and the original Spanish version.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I hope you find it interesting, recognizing that many readers might find it very confusing, while others will be nodding in agreement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the end, I hope our medical bureaucracies<\/a> take it upon themselves to defined cured for every disease, in a scientific fashion<\/a>, so that we can move away from preventatives and treatments that don\u2019t cure, from being advised to \u201clearn to live with our disease<\/em>\u201d as the patient in the story is advised to take lodging in the local inn. I do not believe it is difficult to define cured medically and scientifically \u2013 once we set our minds to it. However, most cures come from health, not from medicines<\/a>, and the more we spend our time confabulating, the farther we will drift from any possibility of cure, cures, curing, and cured.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n To your health, tracy The stranger arrived, out of breath, at the deserted clinic entrance. Sweating and extremely tired from the journey, and from his illness. He mopped his face with a handkerchief, shading his eyes from the glare, he looked at the locked … Continue reading
Author: A New Theory of Cure<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"