THE GREAT SHADOW

Ill fares the land.

Bauer, author of The History of the Ancient World, quotes Mick Mulvaney, President Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, as saying that taxpayers should not have to pay for a “person who sits at home, eats poorly, and gets diabetes.” In other words, your health is your own responsibility. For most of history, the author points out, disease was inflicted by mysterious forces, from deities to angry spirits, and relieved by correcting your mistake through ceremonies or techniques to persuade them that you were sorry. A great change in the Western approach to illness followed Hippocrates, who denied that supernatural forces were responsible. Greek thinkers maintained that four fluids, or humors, moved through human tissues and determined health. When properly mixed, the body was in equilibrium; if not, it malfunctioned. The Hippocratic physician did not look for a specific disease because each illness was a unique imbalance of humors in that flawed individual. Carefully examining each patient, the doctor determined his or her particular imbalance and the means to correct it. Bleeding and purging have gone out of fashion, but a laxative might still expel what’s ailing you, and saunas, steam rooms, and spas are thriving. The scientific revolution converted scientists, the medical profession, and much of the general public. But, as Bauer writes in this splendid examination, some matters have not improved: “We enforce borders, fearing outsiders as carriers of ‘disease’; we distrust the recommendations of medical science (we feel it has failed us, after all), so that vaccine-denying becomes fashionable, homeopathic remedies and magnetic therapies are embraced, energy healing prospers. And, in our fear, we predict the end of the world.”

Deeply insightful if unsettling.