The Outlandish Companion - Diana Gabaldon [117]
However, healing is an art that has traditionally been practiced by women in all historical periods, even in those when social trends have caused an increased reliance on “official” physicians (usually male). The reason for that is obvious to anyone who has a family. Kids get sick. So do pets, domestic partners, and livestock.
In most times and places, there has been no medical assistance save for the wisdom and experience of family and neighbors— and among family and neighbors, those who are most likely to have any knowledge or skill in medical matters are the women because (owing to the undeniable fact that women bear and nourish children) they are the members of the community who are stuck at home, growing plants, feeding all and sundry, and generally keeping things going while the menfolk are out killing mammoths or each other.2
In short (well, all right, not very short— but I could have gone on a lot longer), it would be entirely reasonable for Claire to have healing skills of some sort, and to be able to use these to her benefit, in a way that would not be feasible for many other modern skills. So …
Fine, I thought. She’ll be a healer of some kind. Doctor, nurse, EMT? On the whole, I thought a nurse. The main reason for this choice was that I personally am not a doctor,3 don’t have in-depth knowledge appropriate to complex diagnosis and treatment, and didn’t at the time have the resources or desire to do sufficient research to allow Claire to think complicated things about medical conditions.
Another consideration was that a good modern medical training would be rather wasted, given the materials available in the eighteenth century. No matter that Claire recognized diabetes mellitus, for instance, as she did in Dragonfly—even though she could make the diagnosis and knew the cure, the cure itself was unavailable. No point in being able to diagnose chronic fatigue syndrome or cystic fibrosis in a time like that, I mean.
It seemed to me, then, that we should be better off with Claire as a nurse. If we came across some interesting condition— such as Colum MacKenzie’s degenerative disease—it would be simple enough for Claire to have heard of it somewhere. But on the whole, her expertise would be limited to the fairly simple dressing of wounds and administration of herbal medicines for nonspecific symptoms—interesting, but relatively simple, and hence better suited to a story where the medical details were part of character and setting, but not the main focus of the story itself (as might be the case in a medical thriller).
RETURN OF THE LEECH
I’ve been much interested (not to say amused) by recent news reports of medical research involving the use of leeches and maggots in the treatment of wounds. Seems our invertebrate friends actually are very effective in debriding dead tissue and assisting circulation—just as they were used in the eighteenth century (and earlier) by the ignorant physicians of the period, before modern medicine came rushing in with its technological new broom, to sweep away all those cobwebbed superstitions.
In the mid-twentieth century, of course no one would have countenanced the notion of using leeches. Really, one might as well resort to burning herbs under people’s noses, and sticking needles in the skin! Smug in the grip of “science,” it was plain to society at large that the relevance of all this magical nonsense was long past—and good riddance!
But the wheel of time turns slowly …
The dichotomy between magic and science occurs explicitly for the first time in the eighteenth century, as part of the evolution of the Age of Enlightenment. The basis of both magic and science is control of one’s personal environment—the body— though magic seeks to do this externally, and science (at least in the sense of medicine) internally.
The Age of Enlightenment