Madam, - Dick Ahlstrom's report of Dr Carrie Griffin's lecture on medieval medicine says that a physician in that period would have been "as concerned with the patient's star sign as about good medical practice". This is somewhat misleading.
Pop astrology's "star signs" were not invented until 1930 (by the Daily Express). It is also the case that during the medieval period a knowledge of serious astrology was utterly central to good medical practice. The core rationale for this was cosmological: each individual was considered to be a micro-reflection of the state of the cosmos at the time of birth.
This belief in a relationship between "man as microcosm" and the macrocosmic level was supported by a doctrine of correspondences within a unified field. Information derived from observing the latter could be interpreted with respect to the former, the relationship being one of correlation rather than causation.
As alluded to in the article, the medieval medical perspective was holistic in nature and in that sense has something in common with modern complementary medicine. There was great emphasis on establishing the "temperament" of the patient prior to treatment, a process which relied on astrological techniques.
People of different temperament were considered to be more or less prone to certain conditions, and to vary in their levels of constitutional resilience. This not unreasonable assumption was assessed astrologically.
Equally important was the use of astrology for assessing how the patient's condition was likely to unfold, an important factor in scheduling the timing of various treatments.
It is of course easy to ridicule these practices in retrospect, but it is unlikely that they were completely devoid of functional value.
Healthcare then shared the same motivation as it does today, and was overseen by intelligent physicians working with the best knowledge they had at hand. Increased understanding of the importance of hygiene, sewerage and the contribution of crowded living conditions to disease has saved many millions of lives without any further need for recourse to iatromathematica, the official name for medical astrology.
Modern medical knowledge and practice undoubtedly have greater functional value. On the other hand, one wonders how their negative effects compare with those of medieval medicine, given the reported extent of illness and mortality attributed directly to contact with the health industry in the modern era. - Yours, etc,