Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- In loving memory of Mrs Doris Patz artist, benefactress, friend
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: On Rhetoric and Remedy
- Chapter 1 The Love-Imprint
- Chapter 2 Medical Blindness, Rhetorical Insight
- Chapter 3 Irony, or the Therapeutics of Contraries
- Chapter 4 Metaphor as Experimental Medicine
- Chapter 5 Metonymy and Prosthesis
- Chapter 6 Blindfold Synecdoche
- Epilogue. Just Words
- Bibliography
- Index
- Already Published
Epilogue. Just Words
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- In loving memory of Mrs Doris Patz artist, benefactress, friend
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: On Rhetoric and Remedy
- Chapter 1 The Love-Imprint
- Chapter 2 Medical Blindness, Rhetorical Insight
- Chapter 3 Irony, or the Therapeutics of Contraries
- Chapter 4 Metaphor as Experimental Medicine
- Chapter 5 Metonymy and Prosthesis
- Chapter 6 Blindfold Synecdoche
- Epilogue. Just Words
- Bibliography
- Index
- Already Published
Summary
Ross: I'm Dr. Ross Geller.
Rachel: Ross, please, this is a hospital, okay?
That actually means something here.
Friends, ‘The One Where Joey Speaks French’,
aired 19 February 2004During his Fall 2000 seminar on the Old French language the philologist Edward Montgomery once related a quip he attributed to his mentor, the great Urban T. Holmes, a quip that I cannot help but call to mind as I conclude this investigation into poetic and medical models of the body. At a cocktail party, the Old Man (as Holmes was fondly called in Montgomery's yarns) was conversing with a physician who wondered why Ph.Ds, though not ‘real’ doctors, were granted that title. ‘Sir’, Holmes is said to have replied, ‘we were called “doctors” back when you were still known as “barbers”.’
More than just a witty defence of the oft-misunderstood doctorate of philosophy, Holmes's bon mot inspires reflection on shifts in disciplinary boundaries, and in popular perception of the academic disciplines, from the Middle Ages to the present: a rumination that cannot but help us situate medieval poetic alternatives to medical treatments within a broader cultural context. The title of ‘doctor’, and the learned authority it affords its bearer, is seen today – in non-academic circles, especially – as the exclusive privilege of the medical practitioner. Such a widely held attitude is apparent in this conclusion's epigraph, taken from the popular televised comedy Friends, in which the character Rachel mocks paleontologist Ross's invocation of his ‘meaningless’ academic title; the uproarious canned laughter that follows Rachel's line demonstrates that the show's average weekly audience of more than twenty million viewers was expected to identify with Rachel's point of view.
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- Information
- Blindness and Therapy in Late Medieval French and Italian Poetry , pp. 211 - 214Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2011