Contemporary health care aims at conditions reported to have prevailed on Mount Olympus, where the assembled were immortal and retained youthfulness in looks, skills, and sexual powers.
The only member of the select group known to have had a disability was Hephaistos. No doubt nowadays his leg would be mended, probably with the help of metal implants, and thus, without a limp, he could pursue his wife, Aphrodite, more swiftly and prevent some of her escapades.
Short of the divine gifts of immortality and eternal youth, present day society, in its quest for Olympic conditions, has to rely on healthcare providers, who have learned to prolong life beyond supermaturity and who are able to restore youthful looks, skills and arrange for prodigious sexual performance at any age. The codex of human rights has been embellished with chapters devoted to new noses, hair transplants, the smoothing of wrinkles, tailor made breasts, lifted buttocks, liposuction, medically engineered looks, and enhanced energy and lust.
Ski slopes, golf courses, and tennis courts are populated by springy octogenarian replicas of Apollo, Hermes, and Pallas Athene, whose joints, hearts, vessels, and eyes have been made durable and elastic by means of metal and plastic implants and whose performance is enhanced by sophisticated gadgets. False teeth and an array of drugs help ageing alimentary canals to digest meals of richness unknown to the gods, and Ganymede, cupbearer to Zeus, would be exhausted if he were to replenish the drinks around the television sets, where mankind gathers to imbibe liquor and wisdom.
Penile implants, pumps, and drugs guarantee erectile performance and copulative endurance that would attract the wrathful envy of Zeus, while, thanks to hormones and group psychotherapy, old ladies break orgasmic records.
The immortality and the eternal youthfulness of the gods were divine attributes and did not have to be purchased. The pseudo youth of the inhabitants of the modern Mount Olympus comes dear. Because ageing has been declared a disease and health is considered to be a right, society has to pay for the youthful looks and the frolicking of the senescent. One wonders how much longer the young will be willing to foot the bill.