doctor disease

[Justin Schwartz]

Actually the last witchcraft prosecution in England was in 1944--I am not 
making this up. HLA Hart cites to the case to make some other point in The 
Concept of Law. The "witch" was prosecuted for fortune telling, though. The 
Witchcraft Act was repealed after her conviction. But W is right that the 
last great witch-craze was in roughly 1550-1660, with cases tapering down 
into the early 18th century. By 1720 or so, in Western Europe, one couldn't 
get a conviction, although the statutes remained on the books in some cases 
for two more centuries. W is also right that modern scientific medicine is a 
19th century invention, starts with Venner and Semmelweis, gets going with 
Pasteur. However, JB is right that there is some sort of hard to understand 
association between witch-hunting, the rise of modern science, and 
capitalism. These all took off in the same time and places. Bryan Easlea has 
a good book on Witch Hunting and the New Philosophy, about 20 years old. 
Peter Linebaugh and his co-author have an intersting speculation in their 
new The Many Headed Hydra that the connection has to do with the capitslist 
appropriation of all claims to authority, thus the repression of women's 
traditional knowledge. The MHH is a great book, everyone on this list should 
read it. --jks


>At 11:08 AM 5/11/01 -0700, joanna wrote:
> >When "scientific" medicine was establishing itself as a male domain, it 
>was
> >convenient to label to traditional herbalists "witches" and to burn them.
>
>joanna, sweatie, i think you got your dates wrong.  The last recorded case
>of witch hunting was in 1692 in Salem, MA, whereas scientific medicine has
>not emerged until the end of the 19th century.  What is more, the driving
>force behind wittch burning was the Christian Church which feared
>competition from practitioners of 'pagan' rituals.
>

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