SlowpokeBlog

I realize I'm a tad late with this post, but I wound up spending last night futilely attempting to sleep on the floor of the Detroit airport. To make a long story short, there were storms and Northwest Airlines screwed us. Air travel sucks so bad these days, the least airports could do is provide a "quiet room" for people trying to sleep, away from the obnoxious blare of CNN and the incessant, deafening announcements about carry-on luggage restrictions. A pox on it all! Also, a pox on the evil Chili's Too, the last open restaurant, that denied us entrance around 1 a.m., moments after seating other people.

Speaking of poxes, last week Mr. Slowpoke read me something out of Michel Foucault's Birth of the Clinic about an old medical practice of spinning people in centrifuges to balance out their bodily humors (unfortunately I cannot locate the reference now), which struck me as kind of hilarious. I confess to taking a little artistic license here, placing the centrifuge back in the Middle Ages. Reader Mat in France helpfully notes:

I got a huge laugh from you last cartoon, but I have to add that medieval physicians were actually not all that bad! (let's say a little less "Spanish Inquisition" like"). One cute aspect of it is that "physician monks" in those days use to share their knowledge with the ladies in charge of estates and castles (aka the wife of a duke, lord, baron etc. gone off to tour his territories). Those ladies where highly respected for the special healing powers they knew about. And most of the medicine used was derived from herbs, so it was much "softer" than what we perceive it to be. It would be funny, then, to imagine those anti-science macho types relying on respected women to provide them with organic meds...

I did in fact read something while researching the cartoon about how a large number of medieval doctors were women. Curious, huh?