The medical field sees considerably less use of gic than you would tend to think. There are two primary reasons for this. The first is the limitations of magic and magicians, while the other is a long-standing resistance of the medical community towards change and development that has stilted magical developments in the field of medicine.
Like many forms of magic, healing magic is not very well understood by the layman. It functions roughly the magical augmentation of the body's natural healing processes: allowing the body to air itself more rapidly and more readily fight off toxions, disease and infection. Like any magic which makes a long-lasting alteration in the physical world, healing magic has a considerable amount of "inertia" to overcome -- the tendency for things to remain in their current, "natural" state of being. The effort required for healing magic is therefore directly proportional to the amount of change that the magician is required to perform. Healing a minor injury like a sprain or cut involves giving only a minor "push" to the body's natural systems, while repairing a compound fracture or critical internal injuries can force a healer to exhaustion and may even be beyond their ability. And, despite myths to the contrary, healing magic cannot bring back the dead any more than modern medical science can.
Which is actually better than it sounds. Keep in mind that modern medical science allows us to save people who would have been considered 'dead' only a few decades ago. modern resuscitation techniques can pull a lot of otherwise hopeless cases back from the brink. Properly applied healing magic can do the same. The exact point at which you're "dead-dead" is getting more blurred all of the time. When your heart stops? Nope, we've got CPR. When your brain flatlines? There's eiways neuro-stimulation. When your organs fail? Cyber-replacement. Death just isn't what it used to be.
With the difficulty of healing magic, skilled magical healers are correspondingly rare. This means that the cost for magical healing services is very high, and magical healers can generally charge whatever rhey think the marker will bear for their abilities. This would normally mean that healing magic is the province of the very wealthy, but this is not always the case. Healers employed by private hospitals, HMOs and in private practice for themselves do indeed charge premium rates to their patients, but there are also as many healers who work in non-traditional medical practices, such as the shamans of the Salish Bear Doctor Society, who operate a private medical Dractice and offer free clinics to those in need every month on Council Island. There are also street healers, folk shamans and others who practice magical and holistic healing as an alternative to traditional medicine.
These are the exception, rather than the rule. The vast majority of
healers work in conjunction with modern medical technology and techniques.
Be careful with street healers, too. A lot of them are nothing more than quacks and con-men or herbalists and 'natural' healers who don't know drek about magic.
Unfortunately, it's just those kind of people who give healers a bad name and make it tough for the medical community to readily accept alternative healing techniques.
The reason for this division lies primarily with the strong and long standing refusal of western medical groups like the AMA (and later inheritors like the UCAS Medical Association and the Confederate Physicians' Association) to recognize magical healers. In the early years following the Awakening, the status of magic and magicians were hotly debated issuce for many professional groups and associations. Magicians at the time were almost completely self-taught, either alone or in small fraternal organizations. There was no program of accreditation or testing for magical training, no licensing procedures and no means of measuring competence. The issue was further clouded by hordes of charlatans and would-be magicians making outrageous claims of magical ability with no basis in fact.
The initial ruling of the AMA in 2016 banned the use of magic by physicians and the Association supported the prosecution of magical healers for reckless endangerment and practicing medicine without a license, despite the fact that many of these healers' patients recovered fully under their care. Awakened groups rallied behind the cause of these persecuted healers and demanded fair access to new techniques while conservative actions denounced magical forms of treatment as dangerous and primitive.
It wasn't until accreditation programs were firmly in place in the 2030's that the medical community began to recognize magical treatment as a viable alternative. In 2032, a stringent set of guidelines were issued on licensing magical healers for practice. Such healers were still required to attend medical school and have a medical degree, nursing degree or midwife or medical technician certificate in order to legally administer treatment to patients and were clearly limited by their licensing as to what rreatments they were allowed to administer. Advocates of magical integration hailed the decision as a victory, albeit a minor one. Practitioners who followed less traditional methods of practice were forced to practice their arts in the Native American Nations (where tribal healers and shamans had already been recognized for over a decade) or risk arrest.
The AMA guidelines allowing for magical treatment were issued only a week after
Goblinization Day in 2032 and it is generally believed that the medical crisis posed by
Goblinization pushed the agreement through when medical science proved unable to explain the bizarre transformations.
That and the ability of some healers to cure VITAS went a long way towards improving the
position of magical treatment methods in the eyes of the general public. The medical profession, however, was not endeared by what many saw as magial healers gaining one up on them.
The past twenty years have seen a slow weakening of the more restrictive guidelines on the
practice of healing magic. Licensing procedures have been simplified to provide a 'emergency' medical magician certificate that allows the holder to administer emergency magic and first aid. Many hospitals and HMOs as well as corporations such as DocWagon have been integrating magicians and adepts into their staffs and the code-red trama teams of most major cities includes a healer. Magical treatment remains very expensive and still suspect and carefully controlled in the eyes of most traditional medical practitioners.
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