Alexia, a banana dissatisfied with her chest, chose cosmetic surgery: in forty seconds, a blueberry will be implanted on each side of her. Leo the fennel must be sutured: during a swim, he was thrown by a wave against rocks. Mathilde, a round tomato, gives birth by caesarean section to quadruplets. As for the scalpel, it’s Robin Goncet who conducts these crazy fruit operations – all on video, for almost 390,000 subscribers on his TikTok account entitled “Fruiturgie”. An intern in the sixth year of medicine, the future surgeon wants to impart knowledge, acquaint the general public with the medical world and de-dramatize the disease.
But why the “fruiturgy” ?
Robin Goncet: Before the arrival of Covid-19, I did an exciting internship in hand surgery in Grenoble. As an outpatient, we had a lot of responsibilities: we did the explorations of the wounds of the hand while usually it is the interns or the doctors who take care of it. I loved it, I made a lot of progress in suturing.
After this very demanding internship, I was bored at the beginning of the first confinement. I wasn’t going to class or to the hospital. I missed suturing and I had just installed the TikTok application: I started operating on fruits, without any scientific ambition. It was just a medical student’s delirium. It made me laugh to shoot burlesque images with this contrast between the fruit – colorful, funny, nicer than a pigskin or a real corpse – and the suturing instruments and other sterile fields that we find in the operating theater.
I liked it very quickly. Little by little, I tried to be as realistic as possible, doing real surgeries – even if anatomically a fruit is not very complex. Today, I want to transmit knowledge in a fun way, popularize surgery and familiarize the general public with the medical environment.
Emergency caesarean section of Mary, the orange. ROBIN GONCET / INSTAGRAM
Which video was the most successful?
My video “How to drain an abscess”, about a mango, has 6.4 million views. I think it was funny to see the fake pus coming out of the fruit – I made it by putting condensed milk in a condom. Another video that did very well was the testicular twist on an eggplant, with 3.8 million views. As soon as we talk about testicles and sexuality, people click. But I don’t want to fall into the vice of talking only about sex.
How do you explain the success of your videos?
I get a lot of testimonials from people who have had an operation and want to understand. It’s complicated when you’re under anesthesia or behind a sterile field. I also had a young girl whose mom had breast cancer and for whom it had gone wrong: she was cold with the medical world, my videos comforted her.
The medical world is always very serious, with many unknowns. There is illness, suffering, death … talking about it through playful formats is more fun and it dedramatizes. Many health professionals support me, I am proud to have the validation of my peers. Even in the hospital where I work, in Grenoble, some people lend me equipment and give me advice for my videos. In medicine, we work a lot by companionship, transmission is very important.
Of course, for medical students who follow me, this is not a good way to revise. It’s still fruit! One could not sum up real operations in thirty seconds, it is better to look directly at its course.
What is your background?
I grew up in Chamonix-Mont-Blanc (Haute-Savoie). When I was younger, I was very fond of science – mathematics, physics, astronomy. It was in the third grade that I did an observation internship in a medical analysis laboratory: I thought it was great to observe cells under a microscope. Since then, I have been passionate about medicine. My father is a ski instructor, my mother is an architect: they weren’t the ones who would have blown my mind. Today, I am a sixth-year intern at the Faculty of Medicine in Grenoble. At the end of the year, I will have to choose my specialty and the city in which I will practice. It’s a lot of stress and work: I definitely want to be a surgeon. Ideally, I would like to go to Bordeaux, so that I can go surfing when I get out of the hospital!
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