Sublime

The idea of probing into bodies, living and dead (and especially human bodies) with a view to improving medicine is more or less distinctive to the European medical tradition.

the mind was influenced by the body, the doctor had a part to play in teaching virtue.

were more successful in assisting people to cope with chronic conditions and soothing lesser ailments than in conquering life-threatening infections which became endemic and epidemic in the civilized world:

By 1932, the historian Henry E. Sigerist had noted that medicine’s systemizing impulses were “no longer concerned with man but with disease,” as Anderson and Mackay point out.

The true doctor would no longer be an intermediary with the gods but the bedside friend of the sick.