February 11, 2012

For many centuries, until well into the Nineteenth, bloodletting was a standard medical practice. Only rarely did it make any sense, and often it was bizarrely counterproductive. An example of this ignorant, programmed reaction is found in a Nineteenth Century novel:

. . . Enraged, the hussar turned around and delivered a blow with all his strength, which cut through Fabrizio's sleeve and entered deep into his arm: our hero fell.

***The sergeant approached the wounded men. Fabrizio had already gotten to his feet; he was suffering little, but losing a great deal of blood. . . .

***After riding an hour, he felt quite weak. "And now am I going to faint?" he wondered. Two girls assisted Fabrizio off his horse; no sooner had his feet touched ground than he fainted dead away. A surgeon was fetched, and Fabrizio was bled. . . .⁵

Is the patient wounded and weak? Drain his lifeblood. One rationale was that the body’s humors were out of balance, and negative humors needed to be purged. Medicine has progressed beyond such ignorant, counterproductive remedies.

Conservative political economics has not. As Paul Krugman noted,⁶ the recent jobs report was good, but we’re far from full recovery. "Policy makers should be doing everything they can to get us back to full employment as soon as possible. Unfortunately, that’s not the way many people with influence on policy see it." Although the economy still is in a deep hole, and borrowing to stimulate it could be done at very low rates, the establishment worries about the debt, which is important but secondary, and about inflation, even though there is very little of it. Austerity doesn’t work, as the example of Europe has shown. But the common wisdom has it that

there’s something wrong with cheap money and easy credit even in a desperately weak economy. I think of this as the urge to purge, after Andrew Mellon, Herbert Hoover’s Treasury secretary, who urged him to let liquidation run its course, to "purge the rottenness" that he believed afflicted America.

Is the patient wounded and weak? Purge those evil humors.
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5. Stendahl, The Charterhouse of Parma, pp. 68-71
6. New York Times, 2/5/12