HEROIC MEDICINE
The “Western medicine” described yesterday, as
barbaric as it sounds, was not some slapdash approach
concocted by one sadistic doctor. It was part of a
“kill-or-cure Frankish system known in time as Heroic
medicine,” according to FLOWERS IN THE BLOOD by Dean Latimer
and Jeff Goldberg.<br
rooted in the notion that the way to exorcise one set of
afflictions from a patient’s body was to subject it to a
considerably more violent set of afflictions. The heroics were
entirely on the part of the patient: for even the mildest
ailments, one could expect to be bled, leeched, cupped,
blistered, amputated, sweated, trepanned, scourged, purged
and flayed to a fare-thee-well…… In most cases,
it was useless, of course, and downright lethal in
many, yet its tenets remained broadly accepted for
nearly a millennium.”<br