[Following is some material from my lecture series on the history of Western healing traditions that I offer periodically through the University of British Columbia.]
Doc, I have an earache.
2000 B.C. Here, eat this root.
1000 B.C. That root is heathen, say this prayer.
1850 A.D. Prayer is superstition, drink this potion.
1930 That potion is snake oil, swallow this pill.
1970 That pill is ineffective, take this antibiotic.
2001 That antibiotic is artificial, here, eat this root.
--- Anonymous
Illness, Injury, Death - all are as old as life itself. So is Healing. Ancestral healing methods can be traced sixty millennia to the Neanderthals, and health care remains a prime concern today. Has medical knowledge accumulated steadily over time, or has past wisdom been lost? Do the healing practices of East and West share a common origin? How did our health care communities (mainstream and alternative) evolve? What does the future hold? Periodically I offer a survey course on healing through the ages, under the auspices of the University of British Columbia, in which we consider such matters as: how Egyptians tried to prevent wombs from roaming inside women's bodies; a mediaeval remedy for uncontrollable dancing; why Venetian plague-doctors donned bird masks to visit their patients; how having a sheep in the bedroom was a treatment for fever; why Renaissance princes ate ground-up mummies as a cure-all; herbalists' technique for harvesting mandrake root, whose scream when pulled from the ground was thought to cause madness; Dr. Bernard's prescription for love-sickness; why for most of the past several centuries female physicians had to disguise themselves as men; and much more. Health care reflects the desires, fears and truths of every era, including our own.
"The gods are the real doctors, though people do not think so."
