Conclusions

Abstract

This chapter summarizes the main conclusions of the study: classical medicine played a very small direct role in the ailments of the population as a whole; there is a remarkable extent of overlap between therapies that originated in different religious milieux; the classical view of the body, its processes, and its disorders in the eleventh century was strikingly different from that of both pre-modern European medicine and biomedicine; the health-care initiatives of the time were compromised by officials’ persecution of popular ritualists in the south and elsewhere, and by the inconsistency with which medical policies were applied. With respect to the social and political setting, despite the considerable sharing and appropriation of therapeutic methods, one cannot speak of a health care system, for there was no integration; and one cannot assume that state edicts were obeyed or even enforced throughout the empire. The chapter finally outlines several desirable next steps in understanding ancient health care.