Medicine is a topic of such obvious importance than one hardly needs to ask "So What?" in regard to studying its history.
There are quite a few issues that have not come up in our narrative or links that might lead to further thinking, however, and here are some of them.
This is a current source of political division in the United States, owing chiefly to the extraordinarily high cost of good medical care and the difficulties of sustaining a high level of care across a broad swath of the population. A point that connects this issue to the Middle Ages is the authority of medicine and the relation of medical expertise to the power of the government. We have seen that medicine was closely regulated by the Church but that some practices--e.g., surgery--were ruled out for clerics because they involved shedding blood. Some medical issues are still closely regulated by religion. For example, some religions do not allow blood transfusions or any "invasive" medical procedures; others have strict stands about abortion. But is the authority of religion in these matters still great, or is modern medicine so powerful that it has usurped the role of religion?
Anglo-Saxon medical practice, as Cameron (1988) observes, is frequently dismissed as magical. But he points out that there is plenty of nonrational power at work in modern medicine--the reassuring effect of framed diplomas on the doctor's walls, the professional air, and so forth. We trust the meanings of these signs as indicators of professional skills (see, in the Magic Lexicon, "semiotics," and see in the Magic Narrative Noeth's definition of magic). Anglo-Saxon medicine also reassured its patients, Cameron says ( 212), and that should make us more tolerant of its seemingly magical or superstitious side. Or should it?
People sometimes find that medical technology is so sophisticated that its operations are difficult to understand. Even such familiar devices as the X-ray machine, not to mention CAT scanners and other, newer devices, operate in ways that the eye cannot observe directly. Magic reveals what nature conceals--e.g., the workings of the body can be seen using machines that "see" in ways the eye cannot. Magic achieves remarkable effects from hidden causes; think about laser surgery that operates inside the body without breaking the skin.
At first it seems implausible to compare modern medicine to medieval magic; but if you give it a second thought, do you begin to see some connections?
There is, finally, an interesting point to be made about computers and magic; even the ordinary machine you read this program on strikes many people as magical in its effects. Why?
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