Magic, Medicine, and Medieval Military Memorabilia

[grannybat84112]

No: HPFGUIDX 84415

It's been an absolutely insane week at work for me, so I've fallen 
far behind on answering posts. I'll probably never catch up with all 
the interesting points raised in the meantime--not to mention other 
fascinating threads (sigh)--but I'll make a stab at it.

Caipora played counterpoint:

> Grannybat overflowed:
> [...]
> > Maybe in Britain perfumed baths are more common for young men.
> > In my part of the Western U.S., Real Men(tm) don't use bubble 
bath.
> 
> In your part perhaps, but not F. Scott Fitzgerald's:
> 
<snip passage quoted- from _The Diamond as Big as the Ritz_ >
> 
> The story is set in Montana, which may not be your part of the 
West. 

It's not, but picking apart all the issues with F. Scott's story 
would take us way off topic. Suffice to say that Fitzgerald was an 
East Coast Ivy Leaguer inflicting (for his own purposes) a fantasy 
castle on the extremely oppositive (is that a word? it is now) 
geography of The West. But thanks for the link.


> > ... wounds caused by magic seem to affect the body far more 
> > seriously and take much more time to cure, even with access to 
> > Magical medicine.  (How many WEEKS did Hermione need to lose her 
> > polyjuiced cat form?) 
> 
> Note that the magical injury to Dudley's behind was quickly cured  
> by Muggle medicine. Presumably a wave of a wand could have dealt 
> with that, though.

I was paging thru PS last night and something struck me: Hagrid gives 
Dudley the pig tail on the night of Harry's birthday, but it takes an 
entire **month** for the Dursleys to have surgery scheduled. The 
Hogwarts Express leaves September 1, and Harry asks for a ride to the 
station the night before. "We're going up to London tomorrow anyway, 
or I wouldn't bother..." growled Uncle Vernon. "Got to have that 
ruddy tail removed before he goes to Smeltings."

Just a harmless comic moment, or could this time lapse be a clue 
pointing to something significant? 


> > Mind-altering potions and spells 
> > exist, but so far they've been employed only for personal,
> > ultimately destructive purposes (Lockhart's memory charms,
> > the Imperius Curse, love potions).
> 
> Grannybat has brought up something odd about the magic. Some seems 
> clearly beneficial such as the elixir vitae and the Mirror of 
Erised, 
> but either Rowling or Dumbledore explain to us why they are not as 
> neat as they appear. Many others are simply counters to other  
> magic.... But nearly all of the magic described is rather like the 
> services of the Ankh-Morpork Assasin's Guild: something you  
> purchase for someone else.

I see this as merely the pragatic intersection of a capitalism-based 
economy and magic. Is there something more specific about this 
relationship that bothers you?


> Grannybat gave a series of examples of maladjusted denizens of the 
> WW, and a tour of St. Mungo's that highlighted the ways in which it 
> was more comfortable than but no more medically advanced than  
> Bedlam, and concluded:
>  
> > The Magical World has no organized way to deal with heartache.
> 
> Grannybat wins this one by a knockout. Certainly she's persuaded me.

Oh, thank you! I seem to be making some sense after all.

Given the number of characters we've seen who have serious issues 
with family/emotional/mental baggage--not to mention the 
psychological scars left on the Magical population as a whole by Vold 
War I--one would think St. Mungo's would offer more mental health 
services than it appears to have. Certainly the Department of 
Mysteries should be involving its research on the human brain in 
magical medicine.

I think it's significant that the door in the Department of Mysteries 
that leads (we assume) to the study of love is locked with such 
powerful wards. Why is it that the Magical world fears love so much?


> Gryffindor's sword... may be the only sword we're 
> told about, but there's no shortage of suits of armor.  ...The 
> HP lexicon lists quite a few sets, and even a "long gallery full of 
> suits of armor."  

I rushed to look this up in most of the books (I still haven't 
managed to put my hands on a copy of CoS), and you're right--but in 
all the references to suits and "coats" of armor, swords are never 
mentioned. (Neither are maces, lances, or other weapons. Just the 
armor.) I've seen museum displays of armor with and without weapons, 
so the lack at Hogwarts isn't necessarily a screaming red light...but 
it is, I think, suggestive.


> They could be hunting trophies, remembrances of Muggles who 
> attacked wizards.

Oh, my! Plausible, if gruesome. 

I was thinking more along the lines of historical relics; that is, 
the armor remains as tangible evidence that Muggle men-at-arms once 
served oaths of fealty to wizards just as they did to Muggle kings 
and generals in the medieval past. 


> Armor against magic is bizarre. 
> Amulets, yes. Charms. Voldemort conjures up a magic shield. But not 
> armor. 

Using a spell to conjure whatever defensive barrier or offensive 
weapon a Magical would need at the moment of attack makes much more 
sense than maintaining and packing a suit of armor to battle.

This discussion reminds me of a scene from Bedknobs and Broomsticks, 
a Disney movie made in 1971. The Nazis are attacking a small English 
village on the coast, and the mail-order witch defeats them by 
animating all the suits of armor in the local museum. I have to 
wonder if Rowling will offer us a twist on this scene when the 
Hogwarts castle is attacked. (And it will be, it will be.)
 

> The existence of many sets of conventional armor is either  
> proof that wizards use conventional weapons, or that they do the  
> equivalent of collecting scalps. 

Similiar to Morgana tree in the movie Excalibur? Chilling thought. 
Certainly the Black family might have done. But would the liberal-
minded Albus Dumbledore allow such grim trophies to remain in his 
halls of learning once he became Head--assuming he knew the history 
behind them?

Maybe this is one of those ugly but exciting bits of history that 
Professor Binns dulls down when he's droning on and on and on...like 
the goblin rebellions.


> Or that their decorating sense (or Rowling's)is medieval, and they 
> ape Muggle architecture just as the Hogwarts Express apes a steam-
> engine.  

This would be the simplest explanation, yes. But not nearly as much 
fun.

Grannybat