A small wonder, is it not, that the practice of medicine became a fixture in tales of horror? I remember reading Edgar rice Burroughs in the 1960s, thoroughly creeped out by ideas that must have been part and parcel of a world he knew first hand.
I've never read George Eliot. Have to put her on my list which keeps growing longer. :) It was an interesting period with Semmelweis and Pasteur and the beginnings of scientific medicine. Arrowsmith is the book I read that covered similar territory. The move from the local 'Doc' who usually had a full-time profession to make his living at since a small town couldn't support a full-time physician to more rigorous and scientific training hasn't been an unalloyed good as it created higher and higher barriers to the profession that in the modern US result in a crushing debt, and also means severe restraint of trade as by all trade-unionized professions.
Eh, the problem wasn't lack of regulation, it was lack of knowledge. A Renaissance doctor spoke scornfully of witches: they entirely neglected the astrological side of things.
Opium and labdanum were the only painkillers they had. Bloodletting can relieve some diseases, such as TB, by first reducing the blood volume and then (because the liquid part recovers more quickly) decreasing viscosity, both of which reduce strain on the heart.
Until experiments worked to clear up what worked and what didn't, and when, and to what extent, regulation could have done more harm than good.
I thoroughly enjoyed Middlemarch, with its vivid cast of characters—Dr. Lydgate, Dorothea Brooke, and a range of vividly drawn female figures—and its intricate portrayal of life in a provincial town. Eliot’s narrative feels almost clinical in its observational precision, as though the social world were placed under a microscope. The novel is beautifully written, intelligent, and consistently engaging. Still, compared to other 19th-century masterpieces like War and Peace or The Brothers Karamazov, Middlemarch feels narrower in emotional and philosophical scope. Where Tolstoy and Dostoevsky probe the depths of the human psyche and confront the great existential and metaphysical questions, Eliot’s focus is more sociological: on the interplay of ideals, institutions, and social constraints. Her characters may suffer, but their transformations are muted, more grounded in social circumstance than in spiritual epiphany. Yet this may be precisely where the novel’s greatness lies. As this essay compellingly argues, Middlemarch is not an existential drama but a more subtle historical depiction of a society in flux.
A small wonder, is it not, that the practice of medicine became a fixture in tales of horror? I remember reading Edgar rice Burroughs in the 1960s, thoroughly creeped out by ideas that must have been part and parcel of a world he knew first hand.
I've never read George Eliot. Have to put her on my list which keeps growing longer. :) It was an interesting period with Semmelweis and Pasteur and the beginnings of scientific medicine. Arrowsmith is the book I read that covered similar territory. The move from the local 'Doc' who usually had a full-time profession to make his living at since a small town couldn't support a full-time physician to more rigorous and scientific training hasn't been an unalloyed good as it created higher and higher barriers to the profession that in the modern US result in a crushing debt, and also means severe restraint of trade as by all trade-unionized professions.
Eh, the problem wasn't lack of regulation, it was lack of knowledge. A Renaissance doctor spoke scornfully of witches: they entirely neglected the astrological side of things.
Opium and labdanum were the only painkillers they had. Bloodletting can relieve some diseases, such as TB, by first reducing the blood volume and then (because the liquid part recovers more quickly) decreasing viscosity, both of which reduce strain on the heart.
Until experiments worked to clear up what worked and what didn't, and when, and to what extent, regulation could have done more harm than good.
I thoroughly enjoyed Middlemarch, with its vivid cast of characters—Dr. Lydgate, Dorothea Brooke, and a range of vividly drawn female figures—and its intricate portrayal of life in a provincial town. Eliot’s narrative feels almost clinical in its observational precision, as though the social world were placed under a microscope. The novel is beautifully written, intelligent, and consistently engaging. Still, compared to other 19th-century masterpieces like War and Peace or The Brothers Karamazov, Middlemarch feels narrower in emotional and philosophical scope. Where Tolstoy and Dostoevsky probe the depths of the human psyche and confront the great existential and metaphysical questions, Eliot’s focus is more sociological: on the interplay of ideals, institutions, and social constraints. Her characters may suffer, but their transformations are muted, more grounded in social circumstance than in spiritual epiphany. Yet this may be precisely where the novel’s greatness lies. As this essay compellingly argues, Middlemarch is not an existential drama but a more subtle historical depiction of a society in flux.
Just an excellent piece, Liza. Well done. - Jim