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Different attitudes towards payment distinguish effective from ineffective healers in Piers Plowman. When leches approach healing with a charitable spirit, they typically succeed in curing their patients, whereas those that are overly concerned with making a profit invariably fail. Piers Plowman and associated texts, such as Mum and the Sothsegger, praise the virtues of those healers who resist professionalization and commercialization, performing lechecraft as one part of a greater charitable role. These tensions between commerce and charity are not merely literary issues but also reflect contemporary concerns surrounding efforts at regulating medicine and surgery in late medieval English cities. This article contends that texts of the Piers Plowman tradition add to an existing body of medical satire and serve as valuable sources in the social history of medicine, voicing concerns surrounding the commercialization of lechecraft in Langland’s London.
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