Doctors in “religious, magical, ethical, and political roles.” A passage from Ivan Illich.

I’m reading Ivan Illich’s “Limits to Medicine: Medical Nemesis: The Expropriation of Health” for the third time, and Illich’s writing reminds me of the writings of Nietzsche in that they are gnomic, aphoristic, metaphorical, and poetic. Readers are left to do a great deal of work as they are charmed by the rhythms, images, and wit. Illich’s book might have had a much longer shelf-life if had concentrated on the gnomic, aphoristic, metaphorical, and poetic and not included so many data and contemporary scientific references that have inevitably dated and proved obsolete. In the passage below from “Limits to Medicine,” Illich describes how, like or not, doctor are not only technicians, the role in which most feel most comfortable, but they also perform “religious, magical, ethical, and political” roles. Many doctors either fail to recognise these roles or push them to the back of their minds. When they play these roles, they are, states Illich bluntly, “more pathogen than healer or just…