Superb post, I hope everyone reads it.
If you haven’t read Jennifer Wright’s Get Well Soon I highly recommend it. It was almost entirely information I already knew (surely it is unsurprising that a medievalist would have studied the great plagues?) but it was so well written and engaging that I didn’t mind getting such a small amount of new info out of it.
It’s not the main thrust of the book, but the author uses several ancient and modern examples to suggest that humans are more likely to be healed by their own bodies if their psyches aren’t being undermined by angry judgemental people telling them to harden up or that their illnesses are hoaxes. The inference is that the psychological solace of having a compassionate caregiver pay attention to you, even if it’s just to give you a known placebo, can reduce psychological stresses that are manifesting physically in ways that are preventing normal healing.
