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medical science, which offers a more “holistic” perspective, in
that it recognizes not simply the physical but the “nonphysical”
aspects of health and illness, such as environmental and
psychological stressors. In the end, this is a more “whole”
portrait of health and illness, which Weil defines in this way:
Health is wholeness - wholeness in its most profound
sense with nothing left out and everything in just
the right order to manifest the mystery of balance.
Far from being simply the absence of disease, health
is a dynamic and harmonious equilibrium of all the
elements and forces making up and surrounding a human
being. (51)
Because of that “mystery,” such a portrait of health and illness
is also an uncertain portrait. And similarly uncertain is the
physician’s control of illness. But this was not the case with
nineteenth century Western medicine. For physicians of that
time, new-found knowledge of the human mysteries obtained from
the advances of those Reason-worshipping basic sciences brought
them certainty about nature. And that certainty brought them
control – mastery – of nature, of life and death. Black
explains the significance of that “mastery”:
The medical question, to be precise, was this:
Does the body have innate adaptive powers that are
sufficient to protect it from disease? America's
most famous colonial doctor, Benjamin Rush […]
answered that question, in essence, as follows:
“although a certain self-acting power does exist in
the organism, it is subject to ordinary physical and
chemical laws, and in any case, it is not strong
enough to withstand the onslaughts of disease.”
Having answered that question, Rush moved to a
second question that follows naturally from the
first: given the body's apparent incapacity to
defend itself, what shall the role of the physician
be? To this Rush answered, “Although physicians are
in speculation the servants, yet in practice they are
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