{"id":3056,"date":"2017-04-21T12:03:22","date_gmt":"2017-04-21T16:03:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/manuscript-studies\/?p=3056"},"modified":"2021-08-07T09:44:40","modified_gmt":"2021-08-07T13:44:40","slug":"doctors-have-always-gotten-a-bad-rap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/manuscript-studies\/2017\/04\/21\/doctors-have-always-gotten-a-bad-rap\/","title":{"rendered":"Doctors Have Always Gotten a Bad Rap"},"content":{"rendered":"

In their 2013 guide to help physicians curate their online personas, Kevin Pho, M.D., and Susan Gay tell the story of a doctor who, upon Googling herself, finds out that she shares her name with an optometrist accused of deliberately blinding patients. In the age of WebMD, Twitter, and online rankings, the challenges of managing both one\u2019s reputation and the endless stream of misinformation permeating the web have generated new ways of talking about medicine and its practitioners. Skepticism of medical doctors, however, has been around since long before the profession was recognized as such.<\/p>\n

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The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1959<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The standardization of technical medical training in universities was a late development in the Middle Ages, in part because many academics considered the activities of wise women and barber surgeons to fall below the study of Aristotelian natural philosophy, astrology, and religious council. Even after universities across Western Europe began teaching hands-on medical procedures, they struggled to obligate patients, including aristocratic and royal patients, to rely exclusively on those with degrees. Well into the fifteenth century, it was inconceivable to mandate that English medical professionals be university-trained. This was because, first, the institutions that gave out these credentials in England, Oxford and Cambridge, were far removed from the most populated areas like London. Second, these urban communities were far too vast to be served by the handful of medical graduates.<\/p>\n

The works of two major fourteenth-century authors demonstrate that the skepticism and ridicule with which doctors are often treated to this day existed even as the occupation of the medical professional was still being defined. In his \u201cGeneral Prologue\u201d to the Canterbury Tales<\/em>, for instance, Geoffrey Chaucer heavily satirizes his Physician, who knows little of the Bible, dresses extravagantly, and reaps financial rewards from the plague. A trained alchemist, he uses his claimed expertise in the scientific properties of gold to benefit from its economic value: \u201cFor gold in physic<\/em> (medicine) is a cordial,\/ Therefore he loved gold especially\u201d (1.443-44). Like so many of Chaucer\u2019s professional academics in the Canterbury Tales<\/em>, the Physician abuses his qualifications in order to line his pockets.<\/p>\n

William Langland\u2019s B text of Piers Plowman<\/em> anticipates the \u201cGeneral Prologue\u201d\u2019s criticism of the Physician. In the last passus, the personification Life seeks out a \u201cphisik\u201d to cure him of Old Age (B.20.169). The \u201cPhysician with a furred hood,\u201d to whom Life gives gold \u201cthat gladdened his heart,\u201d is similar to Chaucer\u2019s Physician in that, in his greed, he takes advantage of Life\u2019s illness. He plays a greater role in Langland\u2019s allegorical theology when it becomes clear that his craft obscures the need for spiritual healing. The \u201cglass helmet,\u201d or placebo, that he offers Life is an ineffective diversion from the true purpose of Old Age: to direct Life toward virtue and cast out spiritual despair (B.20.172). Just as the Physician of the \u201cGeneral Prologue\u201d has studied a long list of Greek, Arabic, and other medical sources, \u201cbut little of the Bible\u201d (1.438), Langland\u2019s \u201cphisik<\/em>\u201d transgresses in that he displaces spiritual action with medical practice.<\/p>\n

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L0029312 Woman and doctor talking, Disease man
Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images
images@wellcome.ac.uk
http:\/\/wellcomeimages.org
Woman and doctor talking; text from accompanying treatise on scrolls – Woman and doctor hanging a nude woman upside down by her feet from a scaffold over a bucket for suffumigation – Disease man
Ink and Watercolour
1420? MS. 49
Wellcome Apocalypse
Published: –
Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0 http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Both Chaucer and Langland portray physicians who use the cachet of their expertise to exploit their patients. One of Langland\u2019s earliest adaptors, however, demonstrates that not everyone took such a caustic view. The maker of Piers Plowman<\/em> Z<\/a>, takes care to specify that medical knowledge is valuable, and that at least some of its practitioners are worth consulting. In interpolated lines not present in any other version of Piers<\/em>, Hunger says:<\/p>\n

I defame not fysyk<\/em> (medicine), for the science is true,
\nBut incompetent scoundrels that cannot read a letter
\nMake themselves masters men for to heal.
\nBut they are master murderers who slay men,
\nAnd no leches<\/em> (doctors) but liars, Lord amend them!
\nIn Ecclesiastes the clerk that can read
\nMay see it there himself and then teach another:
\n\u2018Honor the doctor,\u2019 he says, on account of the \u2018need.\u2019 (Z.7.260-267)<\/p>\n

In this passage, the Z maker is more concerned with the intellectual hierarchy generated by medical knowledge than he is with \u201cfysyk<\/em>\u201d itself. He criticizes those without what he deems sufficient education, he applies the logic that the misuse of medicine can be fatal in order to encourage the exclusion of the untrained, and he adds to this sense of hierarchy by immediately asserting that \u201cthe clerk that can read\u201d should mediate the Bible for his less educated audience. This passage indicates that understanding not just of the medical material, but also of the ethical implications underpinning it, must be mediated by a professional. The Z maker\u2019s frustration is akin to that of many of today\u2019s physicians when their patients diagnose themselves using pharmaceutical commercials and online forums. In the case of Piers Plowman Z<\/em>, this tension is amplified by the integral nature of bodily and spiritual healing in medieval culture.<\/p>\n

Erica Machulak
\nPhD in English
\nUniversity of Notre Dame
\nFounder of Hikma Strategies<\/a><\/p>\n

References and Further Reading<\/p>\n

Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Riverside Chaucer<\/em>. Edited by Benson, L.D. and Robinson, F.N. 3rd ed. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Co, 1987.<\/p>\n

Chen, Pauline W. \u201cDoctors and Their Online Reputation.\u201d New York Times, March 21, 2013. https:\/\/well.blogs.nytimes.com\/2013\/03\/21\/doctors-and-their-online-reputation\/.<\/p>\n

Dumas, Genevi\u00e8ve, and Faith Wallis. \u201cTheory and Practice in the Trial of Jean Domr\u00e9mi, 1423\u20131427.\u201d Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 54, no. 1 (January 1, 1999): 55\u201387.<\/p>\n

Fuller, Karrie. \u201cThe Craft of the \u2018Z-Maker\u2019: Reading the Z Text\u2019s Unique Lines in Context.\u201d Yearbook of Langland Studies 27 (2013): 15\u201343.<\/p>\n

Getz, Faye. Medicine in the English Middle Ages<\/em>. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998.<\/p>\n

Kerby-Fulton, Kathryn. \u201cConfronting the Scribe-Poet Binary: The Z Text, Writing Office Redaction, and the Oxford Reading Circles.\u201d In New Directions in Medieval Manuscript Studies and Reading Practices Essays in Honor of Derek Pearsall, edited by Sarah Baechle, John J. Thompson, and Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, 489\u2013513. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2014.<\/p>\n

Langland, William. Piers Plowman: The B Version: Will\u2019s Visions of Piers Plowman, Do-Well, Do-Better and Do-Best<\/em>. Edited by George Kane and E. Talbot Donaldson. London: Athlone Press, 1975.<\/p>\n

McVaugh, Michael. Medicine before the Plague: Practitioners and Their Patients in the Crown of Aragon, 1285-1345<\/em>. Cambridge History of Medicine. Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993.<\/p>\n

Pho, Kevin, and Susan Gay. Establishing, Managing, and Protecting Your Online Reputation: A Social Media Guide for Physicians and Medical Practices<\/em>. Phoenix, MD: Greenbranch Publishing, 2013.<\/p>\n

Rawcliffe, Carole. Medicine & Society in Later Medieval England<\/em>. Stroud, England: Alan Sutton Pub., 1995.<\/p>\n

Rawcliffe, Carole. Urban Bodies: Communal Health in Late Medieval English Towns and Cities<\/em>. Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 2013.<\/p>\n

Rigg, A.G., and Brewer, Charlotte, eds. Piers Plowman: The Z Version<\/em>. Studies and Texts 59. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1983.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In their 2013 guide to help physicians curate their online personas, Kevin Pho, M.D., and Susan Gay tell the story of a doctor who, upon Googling herself, finds out that she shares her name with an optometrist accused of deliberately blinding patients. In the age of WebMD, Twitter, and online rankings, the challenges of managing … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Doctors Have Always Gotten a Bad Rap”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1846,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[264204,56012,264206,264216],"tags":[75960,75961,76094,75963,75956,73938,76046,12658,76025,76045,76092,75959,41728,73478,76093,12],"class_list":["post-3056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-disciplines","category-english","category-history-disciplines","category-manuscript-studies","tag-canterbury-tales","tag-chaucer","tag-clerk","tag-langland","tag-literary-london","tag-manuscripts","tag-material-culture","tag-medicine","tag-medieval-literature","tag-middle-english","tag-physician","tag-piers-plowman","tag-poetics","tag-pop-culture","tag-professional","tag-social-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/manuscript-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/manuscript-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/manuscript-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/manuscript-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1846"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/manuscript-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3056"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/manuscript-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3056\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7976,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/manuscript-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3056\/revisions\/7976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/manuscript-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/manuscript-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/manuscript-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}