When you study history, you will learn that there were (and still are) places where people had different ways of understanding their relationships to their bodies and to healing. This is often solemnly referred to as "ways of knowing." One is expected to be respectful of
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different cultural approaches to the body, time, community, healers, and traditional medicine, to understand that it is outside of our time, cultural context, and modern beliefs. They used herbal remedies, they revered their ancestors in ways that we might not understand and
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which may seem strange to us, they might have even had different relationships to ideas of gender and sexuality that seem alien to our modern understandings. But we are urged to reserve our judgment, at least while in an academic setting.
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But then we're taught about how silly the ancient and medieval notions of humours were, the ridiculous backward ideas that made the early modern plague doctor dress up in his beaked mask stuffed with herbs and spices, and how certain Saints must have been transgender/gay.
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Oh, and PS: That relics were a weird creepy practice by superstitious illiterates, and is spoken of in the past tense
In case anyone is new here: this thread is a criticism and it is the sort of thing I am upset about
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