BmoreArt

Look closely, though, and you can also make out an emerging commitment to empirical knowledge and scientific observation. This was due largely to the work of practitioners and theorists such as Averroes, an Arab polymath born in 1126, and Maimonides, a Jewish physician born twelve years later. These men preached the value of experiment in developing a more reliable diagnostic brand of medicine: an approach evident, say, in the attentive study of patients’ urine and the gradual refinement of herbal remedies. Through a slow process of scrutiny, trial, and revision, a firmer sense of understanding slowly took shape.

Not that this was ever a wholly inclusive or infallible process. In this sense, an image from a 1497 treatise by Hieronymus Brunschwig is particularly interesting. In a clean and crisply lit room, a doctor directs a student’s attention to a neatly arranged series of apothecary jars on parallel shelves. At first glance, the brand of medicine practiced here feels collegial, precise, and reassuringly antiseptic. But soon enough we notice that the two figures are both men, and that the jars bear curious, cryptic symbols that convey their efficacious contents only to those who had been taught the code. 

It’s here that the show suddenly opens up in unexpectedly complex directions. Medicine, we know, is often concerned with the means by which disease is transmitted, and with efforts to arrest those patterns. But this picture is a reminder that the medicine is itself the product of transmissions: of circulating information and ideas. Books like Brunschwig’s played a critical role in disseminating medical knowledge, and there is a clear correspondence between the rise of the printing press and advances in medicine (and, similarly, between the rise of the internet and public access to medical information… and quackery). And yet for centuries medical theory was generally only available to a limited audience of literate men, such as the doctor who gestures confidently with his rod.

But the curators offer, in turn, a further take on the same image. In the accompanying label, they rather abruptly state that the use of abstract symbols on apothecary jars “mirrors the specialized vocabulary which gives the medical field today a sense of exclusivity.” It’s a bold, if also surprisingly polemical, attempt to link fifteenth-century practices to modern inequities. But it’s also fair; modern medicine is frequently characterized by opaque terminologies, insensitively worded intake forms and a startling lack of basic empathy. Evidently, the roots of such uninviting practices are relatively ancient.

Interestingly, though, the curators temper that critique with a second, rosier claim: that the sort of moralizing health-related judgments that were once common in Europe have largely yielded to more accommodating, supportive views. What does that mean, in practice? In the center of the gallery stands a fifteenth-century manuscript, open to a painting of Jesus healing a blind man. The label states that both Luke’s account of the episode and the image itself position blindness “as something that needed healing or fixing.” In a culture that often saw physical health as an index of moral virtue, moreover, blindness could even imply sinfulness.

By contrast, the curators claim that “differences in ability are understood more positively today.” And to support that claim, they point to the work of Pete Eckert, a 67-year-old Sacramento-based photographer who gradually lost his sight to retinitis pigmentosa, a degenerative eye disease. As his vision eroded, Eckert devised a means of relying upon sound, touch and memory to see in new terms; he also developed a style of photography characterized by extended exposures, spectral figures, and blurred lines. Those traits are visible in a work on display, and in a nearby video Eckert summarizes the situation in straightforward terms: “I just see the world very different than you do.”

At this point, then, there’s a lot going on in this small show—and it took me a little while to understand my initial hesitations. I’ll lay three of them out, briefly. First, while it’s fair to claim that Luke’s account associates blindness with imperfection, lack, and even vice, it’s worth noting that the gospel of John offers a different perspective. In John 9, the disciples come across a blind man and ask Jesus if his blindness had been caused by his sins or by those of his parents. Jesus responds that “neither this man nor his parents sinned.” Rather, “this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.” Here, then, blindness is cast as an element in a larger logic of divine display. John, apparently, sees the world very differently than Luke.

The show flattens that distinction, but it also oversimplifies in its optimistic claim that “differences in ability are understood more positively today.” It’s an appealing idea, to be sure—but how true is it? While disability rights activists and legislation have fostered a more educated public and a more inclusive physical environment, they also point to the myriad forms that ableism still takes. Differences in ability may be understood more positively in some modern contexts, but clearly this is a matter of degree, and building a world that truly supports the variously abled takes time and effort.

It’s a well-intended show but it could have done more to make itself accessible to people with disabilities. The texts are adequately sized, and the placards reasonably angled, and the video of Eckert is aptly captioned. But, the lack of a seating option ignores a common principle of inclusive design, and the show also eschews now-common museum options such as tactile versions of some of the examples on display, or raised QR codes that might allow visitors to access audio descriptions of the works. In assuming that we live in a more inclusive period than medieval Europeans, this show almost seems to excuse itself from doing the hard (and admittedly costly) work of further improving our world.

Or here’s a final way of thinking about it. Most of the works in this show actually date from the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries (it’s thus predicated on a generous definition of the Middle Ages). Still, the unspoken logic seems clear: with the revolutionary publication of Vesalius’ findings in the mid-1500s, medicine would enter a very different, and arguably modern, phase. Perhaps. But if we think seriously about the continued stigmatization of obesity, the magical thinking behind Silicon Valley’s embrace of cryonics, or a recent president/ president-elect’s tendency to mock the differently abled and his suggestion that COVID could be treated through injections of bleach, the line between medieval and modern can feel mighty tenuous. And when that same president-elect’s followers claim that his injury in a failed assassination attempt was part of a larger divine plan, it seems that the Gospel of John is still relevant, after all.

Ultimately, of course, a small exhibition can probably only do so much—and this one surely succeeds in raising a number of important issues. It may not resolve all of them, but it does manage to convey the diverse nature of medieval medicine and its core conviction that physical and spiritual health were closely related. The objects on display, too, are consistently interesting (if rather tame; for a larger and more graphic slate of examples, try the 1998 volume Medieval Medicine in Illuminated Manuscripts). And they offer a collective proof that pre-modern Europe envisioned the attainment and maintenance of well-being in a wide range of ways. Approach this show with an open mind, then, and you may well find yourself rethinking your own vision of good health.