Island Doctor

The hardy, denim-clad fishermen of He de Sein (pop. 1,328), six storm-swept miles off France's Brittany coast, regard both doctors and tax collectors as meddlesome nuisances. For three hard-lived centuries the Senans have paid no taxes; between last November and February they sent five doctors packing, each with his faith badly shaken in both humanity and the Hippocratic oath. Restless Paris Doctor Jean l'Haridon, 35, wartime resistance fighter and onetime Boy Scout, hoped to avoid the fate of his immediate predecessors; he saw He de Sein as a new world to conquer. When he heard that the island was again without a doctor, he volunteered his services. At first, Dr. l'Haridon was delighted. In his first week he set a fisherman's broken leg, sewed up another's gashed hand, made the rounds of 50 "economically feeble'' oldsters entitled by French law to free medical care. "It was a job you could grasp with your two hands." L'Haridon explained later, "Here was real work for a dedicated man.''

But he soon learned that dedication was not enough. Mainland health officials paid L'Haridon only 23,000 francs ($65) a month; the islanders gave him an unheated stone house furnished only with a single candle and a portrait of Louis Pasteur and, beyond that, little but sullen acceptance. "In the beginning," says L'Haridon, "it was like camping. I like camping, but how could I work as a doctor?" As the weeks wore on, the young doctor was appalled by his task. The islanders refused to pay bills or take orders. Some 300 Senans were seriously ill with bronchitis, rheumatism and TB; many of the children had whooping cough. What lie de Sein needed, L'Haridon pleaded to mainland authorities, was a modern dispensary equipped with X ray to spot TB cases, plenty of drugs, and a helicopter to remove serious cases to the mainland. Last week the mainland offered to equip a dispensary--but only if the islanders would pay their taxes. "No. never. We will never surrender." said Innkeeper Felix Guilcher, and to a man, the aroused Senans echoed him.

As he made his rounds last week, Physician l'Haridon decided that the case of lie de Sein was more than a 20th century doctor could cure. Said he: "I won't leave until another doctor arrives. But I can't stay here." To the Senans, unhealthy but untaxed. the impending departure of their sixth doctor in six months was no crisis. "So he goes," shrugged one islander. "Another one will come along."

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