Our American friends John and Lisa and their three small kids visited us in Germany twice and each time one kid or the other fell ill. The last time, Annie ended up in a Frankfurt hospital due to vomiting. The poor parents immediately begged the doctors for antibiotics, to which the answer was an adamant “No.”
This was in contrast to our experience when, on the way to the US, my German husband fell ill on the airplane.
We went to see a doctor upon landing and he was immediately prescribed Cipro, the antibiotic that is used against anthrax.
In the both cases, Annie and my husband recovered, and both apparently had food poisoning. But these experiences show a big contrast in how medicine is practiced on the opposite sides of the Atlantic.
In Germany, as well as in many other European countries, antibiotics are only prescribed if absolutely necessary. As a mother of two myself, I found this a bit frustrating sometimes. I would take my feverish baby to the pediatrician only to be told to go home and observe the baby for a few days. A temperature does not require intervention until it goes over 40°C. My other baby had chronic eye infections due to narrowed tear ducts. The eye specialist told me off for using anti-bacterial drops. A light massage and homeopathic drops should do.
But European doctors have very good reasons to be cautious when it comes to using antibiotics. Many microbes become resistant to antibiotics so that new and stronger medications are constantly needed to be developed to fight infection. When penicillin was discovered almost 80 years ago, it was considered the heaven-sent cure for all types of infections. Nowadays, penicillin is pretty much useless against many current resistant strains of bacteria.
Medicine is not an absolute science. Sometimes we have to decide: do we want a fast solution, or do we let nature take its healing course?
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