—Attributed to Oscar Wilde at the New York Customs, 1882
OSCAR WILDE’S QUIP, THOUGH WITHOUT its lightness of tone, might have served as the title of Professor Didier Raoult’s autobiography. A man eminent in his field of microbiology, he shot to fame and media attention at the beginning of the Covid-19 epidemic when he vigorously promoted the combination of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin as both preventive and life-saving. He soon attracted a cult-like following, not least among whom numbered Donald Trump. Raoult became infatuated with his own infallibility.
He was certainly made for gurudom. A man of large presence and personality, to put it mildly, his appearance was not at all what might have been expected of a medical scientist. On the contrary, he looked as if he had stepped out of the pages of . Raoult has given more than one explanation for this choice of appearance: a
