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SHADIA ABDEL-RAHMAN TÉLLEZ
Universidad de Oviedo
abdelshadia@uniovi.es
<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9546-9965>
THE MEDARCHY: MEDICAL DISCIPLINE
AND THE PANOPTICON IN CADUCEUS WILD
LA MEDARQUÍA: DISCIPLINA MÉDICA
Y EL PANÓPTICO EN CADUCEUS WILD
https://doi.org/10.26754/ojs_misc/mj.202510413
Abstract
This article explores the paradoxical nature of biopower when social, political and
economic interests clash with individuality and autonomy. Special emphasis is placed
on the Foucauldian concept of the panopticon to examine the mechanisms of (self-)
surveillance as the most effective instruments of social control. Taking the recent
pandemic as the starting point for critical reflection, this article raises questions about
the purview of biopower through the analysis of the speculative novel Caduceus Wild,
published in 1959 by Ward Moore with Robert Bradford. This analysis first focuses
on the panopticon as the main instrument of discipline to contain the global health
crisis provoked by the coronavirus. Secondly, it examines the particularities of
healthcare dystopias. Finally, it explores the potential of the discourses of biopower to
transform the institutional authority of medicine acting in the name of public health
into an oppressive system of social control by adopting the form of a totalitarian
medical regime, as described in the fictional world imagined by Moore and Bradford.
Keywords: medicine, Panopticon, power, speculative fiction, discipline.
Resumen
El presente artículo explora la naturaleza paradójica del biopoder cuando los
intereses sociales, políticos y económicos entran en conflicto con la individualidad
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y la autonomía. Se presta especial atención al concepto foucaultiano del panóptico
para contemplar los mecanismos de (auto)supervisión como los instrumentos más
efectivos de control social. Tomando la reciente pandemia como punto de partida
para una reflexión crítica, este estudio plantea cuestiones sobre los límites y
jurisdicción del biopoder mediante el análisis de la novela especulativa Caduceus
Wild, publicada en 1959 por Ward Moore junto con Robert Bradford. El presente
análisis se centra, en primer lugar, en el panóptico como el instrumento disciplinario
más importante para atajar la crisis de salud global provocada por el coronavirus.
En segundo lugar, se examinan las particularidades del género de distopía sanitaria.
Finalmente, se explora el potencial de los discursos del biopoder para transformar
la autoridad institucional de la medicina para actuar en nombre de la salud pública
en un sistema opresivo de control social que adopta la forma de un régimen médico
totalitario, como el descrito en el mundo ficticio imaginado por Moore y Bradford.
Palabras clave: medicina, panóptico, poder, ficción especulativa, disciplina.
1. Introduction: Discipline and Illness
Amidst the unprecedented global crisis posed by the COVID-19 pandemic,
governments worldwide took urgent action to protect their citizens and responded
with homogenous security policies, ranging from lockdowns and travel restrictions
to vaccination and testing campaigns (Holst and van de Pas 2023). Yet this
consensus reaction was not purely political, but rather guided by a single voice,
that is, the voice of the “biomedical empire”, as Barbara Katz Rothman puts it
(2021: 2). During this public health catastrophe, medicine reinforced its status as
an institution of power, influencing societal norms and behaviours. The new health
policies, albeit urgent and necessary, cannot be considered neutral or exceptional
protocols. This conflation of medicine and control seems to invoke the Foucauldian
concept of biopower, which extends beyond hospitals to target individual bodies
and the general population (Foucault 1978: 139). As this public health catastrophe
proved, the implementation of biopower is intimately linked to the principle of
panopticism, which sees constant surveillance as a characteristic of modern societies
aiming to incite individual or collective self-discipline. The concept of the
panopticon is not new. Yet in the face of modern health crises, of which COVID-19
is one in a series of such catastrophic diseases that include malaria, Ebola or mpox,
it is necessary to explore the implications of the control and regulation of everyday
life by biopower. This authority exerts control over fundamental aspects of human
life —including birth, fertility and death— and is manifested in various policies and
regulations, like the legalisation of abortion and euthanasia or the implementation
of one-child policies.
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Oscillating between the enforcement of authority and the intention to protect the
citizenry, the ambivalence of biopower has inspired the creation of fictional worlds
where medicine becomes systematic to the point in which it adopts a dystopic
tenor. The nature of the control performed by biopower becomes even more
complicated when we consider literary expressions that provide a critical perspective
to explore the power relationships and factors that regulate societies and individuals.
Representations of biopolitics and the panopticon in speculative and science fiction
include works like Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1998) and The Heart
Goes Last (2015), Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go (2005), or Ninni Holmqvist’s
The Unit (2008), among others. However, a lesser known novel that imagines a
world under an explicit medical totalitarianism needs to be considered for critical
examination to understand the relationship between biopower, the panopticon
and health. Although lacking the literary quality of mainstream speculative
literature, Caduceus Wild, first published in 1959, offers a space to investigate the
discipline and normalisation exercised by medicine as an institution of power. This
article therefore aims to establish a correlation between the meaning of medicine in
both our (post-)pandemic reality and the fictional world of Caduceus Wild,
addressing the mechanisms and discourses used by biomedical power to enact
panoptic measures that restrict individuality and freedom. Considering the recent
pandemic as the starting point for critical reflection, this analysis focuses firstly on
the history of the panopticon as the main instrument of biopower; secondly, on the
particularities of the speculative genre of healthcare dystopias and stories about
medical totalitarianism; and finally, on the potential of the discourses of biopower
to transform the institutional authority of medicine acting in the name of public
health into an oppressive form of social control as Moore and Bradford depict in
their novel. This critical analysis of Caduceus Wild aims to explore the onset of
this fictional dystopic world controlled by medical power, paying special attention
to the forces that constitute the panoptic system of control of the public body, as
well as the counterforces that struggle to reclaim the individuality and autonomy
of citizens.
2. Panopticism and Medicine
In Discipline and Punish, Michel Foucault abstracted the substance of the
panopticon devised by Jeremy Bentham and used it as a metaphor of “a mechanism
of power reduced to its ideal form” (1995: 205), that is, the disciplinary authority
that governs modern societies. This utilitarian model was originally designed to
instil a feeling of being under constant surveillance, even if such surveillance does
not actually occur, encouraging self-discipline and self-regulation as a result of the
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internalisation of the mechanisms of external control. Inspired by Bentham’s
work, Foucault adopted the principle of panopticism, which was especially
relevant in the clinical context, explaining that the medical eye inherently has a
ubiquitous power to control individuals: “The medical gaze is a controlling,
dissecting gaze and it is made possible by an institution — the clinic” (Svenaeus
2000: 26-27). The birth of the clinic, in Foucault’s historical archaeology, is
intimately related to the transformation of the medical knowledge and the
prioritisation of the gaze in clinical practice, allowing a new level of control of
individuals and populations favoured by biopower, defined as the “power over
life”, which is articulated around “the anatomo-politics of the human body” and the
“biopolitics of the population” (1978: 139, emphasis in the original). In other
words, biopower demands the “precise control and comprehensive regulations”
of both the individual body and the population (1978: 137). Historically, the
emergence of biopower coincided with “the multiplication —and expansion— of
the human sciences, which are made to serve as the legitimating discourses of this
new form of power” (Cisney and Morar 2015: 4). Biomedical sciences have been
particularly pivotal in the articulation of biopower in the individual and collective
regulations and normalisations.
Irving Kenneth Zola noted the increasing consolidation of modern medicine as an
institution of social control achieved by “‘medicalizing’ much of daily living, by
making medicine and the labels ‘healthy’ and ‘ill’ relevant to an ever increasing
part of human existence” (1976: 210). In this context, Marshall Marinker’s article
“Why Make People Patients?” is relevant to the discussion about medical authority,
revealing the opposition between personhood and patienthood and the implication
that “patients are created by doctors” (1975: 81). The doctor’s ability to create
patients also indicates that diseases are creations of the medical practice, or, as
Foucault states, “fabricated” by medical discourse: “The sign [symptom] […]
assumes shape and value only within the questions posed by medical investigation.
There is nothing, therefore, to prevent it being solicited and almost fabricated by
medical investigation” (2003: 162). In a way, medicine has become a producer of
healthy bodies, enabling individuals to adhere to the social and moral standards of
well-being. As Zola also claims, the institutionalisation of medicine has become an
instrument of transformation of social practices and attitudes: “Medicine has
become an institution of social control and has led to increasing application of the
labels ‘health’ and ‘illness’ to social problems, as well as to widening areas of
everyday life” (1986: 213). The institution of medicine in fact imposes a disciplinary
power over the body:
Sickness is a threat to rationality, for it threatens social life and erodes self-control
[…]. Western medicine is thus directed towards controlling the body, keeping it
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from subsiding into the chaos and disorder threatened by illness and disease.
(Lupton 2012: 24)
In the medical paradigm, the transformation of the ill subject into a patient involves
the creation of the medicalised body, understanding medicalisation as any treatment
or remedy, invasive or not, that entails prescriptive instruction by a health
professional. However, medicalisation has been extended to several practices, even
those that are not even pathological nor a threat to the social order.
By presenting itself as objective, rational and beneficial to the well-being of the
population, the biopower embodied by the institution of medicine reinforces its
own legitimacy. Biopower, in this sense, reflects the Foucauldian concept of
power/knowledge, that is, the dynamic process of mutual legitimation, where
knowledge is not simply used by power but is also the means through which power
is exercised and maintained. According to Cisney and Morar, “No longer does
power emphasize the law as the product of an arbitrary dictate of the sovereign”,
but rather “functions under a different type of rule, one located in the natural
realm, a norm, legitimated by the sciences” (2015: 4, emphasis in the original).
Medicine, in this sense, is regarded as a “repository of truth” (Zola 1976: 210),
for it creates its own body of knowledge in order to justify its intervention in the
way individuals approach their bodies, health and habits. Biopower is normally
implicit and unobtrusive in everyday life, as it operates through norms, practices
and institutions without overtly appearing as a form of control. Yet, during the
COVID-19 health crisis, the biopower enacted by the medical institution
implemented an explicit system of control over individual bodies through
exceptional public health measures based on the surveillance of the general
population.
As Danielle L. Couch, Priscilla Robinson and Paul A. Komesarof argue, the
COVID-19 crisis precipitated the establishment of a disciplinary regime to ensure
compliance with the restrictions by the implementation of new surveillance
methods —namely smartphone apps— to improve “symptom tracking and contact
tracing” (2020: 810), which, together with the law enforcement, aimed to protect
the public order for the sake of public health. These surveillance measures were
quickly internalised by the population, who started to show “self-disciplinary
practices” like “handwashing, the maintenance of physical distance, new ways of
in-person greeting, a sense of revulsion or danger associated with personal contact,
mask-wearing and the protocols and good manners associated with Zoom
meetings, virtual parties, and on-line professional conference”, among many
others (Couch et al. 2020: 812). This power to dictate the response to the global
crisis was reinforced by the new knowledge continually produced by the biomedical
sciences since the outbreak of the pandemic, as the main awareness-raising measure
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among the general population was persistently spreading information about the
particularities of the coronavirus, routes of infection, symptoms, recovery and self-
isolation periods or the sequelae of the disease. The influence of biopower on
individual and public behaviour proved the ubiquity of the gaze and control of
institutions of power, including medicine. For that reason, this situation raises
questions about the limits and extent of biopower not only in the scenario of a
pandemic, but in everyday individual and collective life. Is it possible to imagine a
world where biopower is the main form of power and medicine is the only
institution of social control?
3. The Healthcare Dystopia
No pandemic or global health crisis, regardless of its severity, could ever precipitate
a world governed exclusively by biopower. However, despite the improbability of
this scenario, it is worth exploring the implementation of a disciplinary regime of
social control based on this form of power, where the authority of the medical
institution to act for the common good is regarded as unquestionable and supreme.
In speculative and science fiction, the subgenre of healthcare dystopias opens a
space to question the limits of individual freedom, rights and privacy as the price
for health. As in other dystopic stories, authors pessimistically imagine “the very
worst of social alternatives” as a reflection of the current situation in the
contemporary world (Baccolini and Moylan 2003: 6). Additionally, from a
rhetorical perspective, as Rob McAlear explains, new critical dystopias rely on a
“‘fear appeal’ in an attempt to persuade their readers of the necessity of intervention
in the present to avoid the possible horrors of the future” (2010: 24). Most
dystopias describe a disciplinary society where the body is under constant control
and regulation, like Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We (1924) or Aldous Huxley’s Brave New
World (1932), which reflect “pronatalist and eugenic” concerns related to the
mechanisms of biopower to exert such control in a more explicit or oblique way
(Falcus 2020: 68). Health has been a major theme in dystopian literature, especially
in those stories where health has been used as a means of societal control. Health
dystopias, especially those that describe health dictatorships, provide new
perspectives on the balance between public health and personal freedom. In this
context, the concept of “healthism” —coined by Robert Crawford— gains
importance, as it works “as dominant ideology, contributing to the protection of
the social order from the examination, critique, and restructuring which would
threaten those who benefit from the malaise, misery, and deaths of others” (1980:
369). This healthist scheme has a strong social component, since “like racism or
sexism”, it is based on “the idea that one’s health is a measure of one’s value”
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(Welsh 2022: 12). Although the concept of healthism emphasises individual
responsibility for one’s health, it also encourages blaming individuals whose
choices go against what is considered acceptable healthy behaviours according to
medical and social expectations. From this viewpoint, the idea that subjects are
empowered to decide over their own health is illusory.
Either by blaming individuals for their health-related “choices” or imposing
prescriptive models of health, healthism shows that health can be used as a tool for
social control. Healthism can lose its individualistic nature in situations like the
COVID-19 pandemic, which illustrates how collective health can override individual
choice. This is precisely the premise of Corpus Delicti (2009) by the German writer
Juli Zeh —translated into English as The Method— the story of a totalitarian health
dictatorship called “Methode” established in Germany in an unspecified future. In
this fictional world, every aspect of citizens’ bodily and private life is controlled,
“from the regulation of fitness to the criminalisation of alcohol, caffeine, or tobacco
consumption to the administration of a compulsory dating service based on
immunological compatibility” (Smith-Prei 2012: 110). This novel portrays the
interrelationship between the panopticon, medical authority, healthism and social
control, that is, concepts that have been the object of critical inquiry in the last five
decades. Healthcare dictatorship, albeit uncommon, is not a new topic in dystopian
literature. Even before Foucault’s panopticism, Zola’s medicalisation or Crawford’s
healthism, a speculative novel written in the late 1950s questioned the social control
exerted by medical power over individual bodies.
Written by Ward Moore with Robert Bradford and originally published in four
instalments in The Original Science Fiction Stories magazine in 1959, Caduceus
Wild redefined the concept of “Big Brother” conceived by George Orwell in
Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) by describing a totalitarian medical regime. Following
the tradition of dystopic fiction that “opens in media res within the nightmarish
society” (Baccolini and Moylan 2003: 5), Caduceus Wild is set in an alienating
world governed by the “medarchy”, described as the ruling of the “sane and
healthful society where the doctor’s prescription was the law” (Moore and Bradford
1959a: 6). The novel follows the story of three rebels, Cyrus (a fifty-year-old
man), Victoria (a twenty-four-year-old woman) and Henry (Victoria’s younger
brother), who consider the medarchy an oppressive system and struggle to escape
the U.S. for England, where falling ill or not conforming to the normative model
of well-being is not a crime. Along their journey these characters face several
obstacles imposed by the medical dictatorship that enforces constant control on
citizens, who must carry their medical records with them at all times to prove their
compliance with health edicts. The novel juxtaposes the law of the caduceus
dictated by the medarchy and this group of “mallies”, or maladjusted, a minority
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committed to overturning this “cradle-to-grave regulation of a person’s life, in the
name of ‘health’” (Moore and Bradford 1959a: 6). Thus, instead of a welfare state,
the world described in Caduceus Wild is a “healthfare” state that prioritises health
and well-being as a central aspect of governance. It is important to note, however,
that the medarchy was not actually a political system:
It [the medarchy] governed, but it was not government. The 86 States of the Pan-
American Union were still sovereign. Legislators still enacted laws; policemen
arrested, courts tried, jailers executed sentences. Only now there was something
above the law, above the government, and aside from it. Laws were laws but medical
regulations were paramount. (Moore and Bradford 1959c: 83)
The medarchy is institutionalised in “the Ama” (a term that goes unexplained in
the novel, but which may stand for the American Medical Association (AMA), an
institution founded in 1847), whose rulings govern not only life and death, but
also more mundane affairs, such as approving marriage licenses or procreation.
It is important to note that Caduceus Wild was revised and re-published as a book
by Moore in 1978. The original story and the novel should be considered two
different texts. As Moore explains in the foreword to the book, given the new
expectations about the future arising in the almost two decades since the publication
of the initial story, “an effort has been made to build the new novel upon the
ideological armature of the original, and to use, wherever possible, material
conceived for the original work” (1978, Author’s Note). Re-written after the
publication of Foucault’s The Birth of the Clinic in 1963, the novel may be
interpreted as a response to the growing interest in exploring the societal concerns
of its era regarding authority, power and the loss of autonomy, which historically
coincided with the proliferation of the civil rights movements in the U.S. In
medical and sociological contexts, Foucault’s archaeological work also opened up
a critical space for new discourses regarding medical knowledge and practice.
Published in 1975, Ivan Illich’s Medical Nemesis examines the limitations and
legitimacy of medical practice, exploring “what happened socially and culturally to
communities when their previous independence in matters of suffering and healing
is transformed to dependence on the medical system” (Downing 2011: 53). The
anti-psychiatry movement also gained prominence during the heyday of American
counterculture in the 1960s for denouncing paternalistic medicine as a
manifestation of patriarchal control, expressed through the medicalisation of non-
medical aspects of life that have social origins or the imposition of psychiatric
treatments against the patient’s will (Gere 2017: 197). It seems that in Moore’s
second novel these fears and anxieties were decisive in recreating his nightmarish
vision of a future ruled by an oppressive medical authority. In terms of the quality
of its social critique, therefore, the novel may be considered more mature than the
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original stories. Yet, although the differences between both texts call for a
comparative study, the purpose of this analysis is to explore the genesis of the
world initially imagined by this author, paying close attention to the agents and
institutions that make up the panoptic system of this healthcare dystopia.
Since the original stories of Caduceus Wild predate the formulation of the concepts
discussed in the first sections of this essay, an asynchronous interpretation will be
presented in order to engage critically with this text, for it can be considered a
fictional precursor to the critical discourses that emerged in the subsequent decades,
proving the prescience of speculative fiction. Therefore, instead of focusing on the
critical and theoretical discourses that may have influenced Caduceus Wild, it is
pertinent to contextualise the interpretation of this novel within the specific
sociopolitical situation in which it was written. The implicit reference to the
American Medical Association reflects the power wielded by the institution during
the 1940s and 1950s to suppress “those who questioned American medicine’s
status quo”, as these decades saw the rise of activism among medical students
defending a nationwide system of government-funded health insurance as well as
demands for training on the socioeconomic dimensions of medical care
(Chowkwanyun 2019: 127). During the period, the AMA was the most influential
institution in national health politics, a situation that is mirrored in the world of
Caduceus Wild. This health dystopia exemplifies the dangers of weaponising health
by paradoxically creating a universal healthcare system in which all citizens become
patients with no power, but the obligation to comply with the prescriptions of the
State, represented in the centralised control of the Ama. This universalisation
involves the homogenisation of the population and the creation of a discriminatory
system that punishes those who do not fit the normative (physical and ideological)
model of health. The dystopian tone of the novel establishes a correlation between
reality and a hypothetical dictatorial future, using fear to warn about the importance
of resistance and change. Unlike Corpus Delicti, which initially presents the
“Methode” in a utopic light as a benevolent dictatorship but is later contested by
the main character driven by an opposing utopian “impulse for corporeal freedom”
(Smith-Prei 2012: 114), the “ideal” society created by the medarchy in Caduceus
Wild is seen as unequivocally oppressive by the main characters. Nonetheless, it is
necessary to emphasise that both dystopic and utopic stories work under the same
principle, as both imagine “a future space within the text in an attempt to negate
the status quo and open critique” (McAlear 2010: 32). The three protagonists of
Caduceus Wild offer a counter-narrative that challenges the status quo of the
contemporary reality of the text, representing the struggle to resist authoritarianism
and reclaim freedom and autonomy. However, as will be seen in the following
section, this confrontation is only discursive, for the main characters do not bring
about change in the society they want to escape.
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4. The Rule of the Caduceus
The medarchy, as the expression of biopower, emerged out of the consolidation of
the sciences, which favoured the transformation of medicine from a “healing art”
into a discipline with unlimited potential:
‘Science’ in upper case, ‘The Age Of’, pulling medicine to its pinnacle. If science
could invent a breechloading rifle to kill a man a mile away, the Science could save
his life. If Science could wipe out whole cities, it established a right to rule those
spared. The doctor could perform a caesarean section and rip MacDuff untimely
from his mother’s womb; didn’t this give him authority to prescribe which wombs
should bear, and whose seed was unfit for procreation? (Moore and Bradford
1959a: 15-16)
Knowledge is the basis of the medarchy, as it served to legitimise the ubiquitous
medical authority. This system thus points to a change in the paradigm of power,
as Cyrus ponders: “A few hundred years ago, all you needed was numbers or muskets.
Now you needed knowledge. Lack of it keeps us under their [the health professionals’]
thumbs. More than that, it makes it ever harder to convince Patients that the Ama
could ever be wrong about anything” (Moore and Bradford 1959a: 13, emphasis in
the original). Under the rule of medicine, knowledge, rather than military force,
becomes critical in shaping power. The control of knowledge therefore conveys
the power to control everything else, for only medicine can determine what is
accepted as truth. A branch of science based on the assumption that valid
knowledge can only be acquired by means of empirical methods, medicine
constructs the reality of disease, which is accepted as the only valid way to regard
human experience, as Michael Bury argues: “Modern medicine’s ‘positive
knowledge’ about disease is merely the product of the power which the medical
profession has to determine what is, and what is not, ‘true’ about disease” (2005:
20). This power/knowledge binomial sustains the myth of the infallibility of
medicine that characterises modern medical culture, as the systems of knowledge
of medicine and its operations of power are co-constructed and mutually
legitimised. Additionally, the monopolisation of knowledge by the medical
establishment reinforces the hierarchical nature of the doctor-patient relationship,
as it is based on the intellectual superiority of the healthcare professional, as Cyrus
suggests: “The philosophy of the Ama has only one: its subjects must be made and
kept physically healthy, intellectually quiet […] and socially adjusted. We are here
now because we’ve rejected those concepts” (Moore and Bradford 1959d: 93).
Paternalism in clinical practice is expressed in the dominance of the doctor
imposing therapeutic intervention over the patient, who is expected to be silent,
passive and compliant, showing blind trust in the doctor’s expertise. This fictional
account manifests the essence of the culture of modern medicine, which circulates
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not only in the hospital, but also in the social discourses of sickness, reinforcing the
superiority of the doctor’s knowledge over the patient’s voice. Yet this dominance
is enacted in acknowledgment of the good intentions of medicine: to cure the
patient and restore health.
The nature of modern medicine reflects the foundation of the medarchy in
Caduceus Wild, where the supremacy of this disciplinary regime was based “on the
acquiescence of the Patients, on acquiescence based on the assumption that the
Ama was purely benevolent — that those who opposed it were hurting themselves”
(Moore and Bradford 1959a: 27). This statement reflects the essence of Marinker’s
intention when investigating why doctors make people patients since, as the author
concluded, ill subjects transform themselves into patients to “establish a healing
relationship with another [the doctor] who articulates society’s willingness and
capability to help” (1975: 84). Yet, a clarification is required here, for, although ill
subjects voluntarily enter the medical paradigm and become patients, they do not
always consent to becoming a passive and depersonalised object of the medical
gaze and surveillance. In this sense, it is important to note that being ill is a mode
of experience, while being a patient is the role assigned in a specific context. In this
sense, the answer to Marinker’s question about “why make people patients?” relies
on the fact that the doctor’s authority and knowledge are elicited by the patient’s
need for help to restore health. In fact, when describing the origins of the
medarchy, Moore and Bradford picture a setting where only medicine could save
humanity in the aftermath of a global disaster:
Most people like to be doctored, to be told what to do and what not to do. Saves
thinking. Like the army used to be. Remember, that’s how the Medarchy happened
in the first place: we begged them to take over when responsibility got too much for
us, with all the radiation sickness and bacteriological warfare. (1959a: 41)
The passivity inherent to patienthood indicates that patients, in some way, are
“expected to give up his or her jurisdiction of the body over to the doctor”, who by
means of their knowledge about diseases make decisions to cure and fix the diseased
body, imposing diets, medication or new habits (Lupton 2012: 24). The priority of
medicine, thus, is to restore health and well-being, two notions that are regarded
strictly in biopsychosocial terms, as “something which could be produced by a fully
developed technology in a perfect society” (Mordacci 1998: 28, emphasis in the
original). In Caduceus Wild medicine is the enabler of that utopian society, as it acts
as a technology aimed at improving health and producing healthy bodies. However,
as the novel reflects, there is ambiguity regarding what constitutes the “good”
pursued by medicine:
only for the good of mankind, of course — only to make people healthier, happier,
longer-lived. If in the process the doctor became an object of veneration […], no
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harm was done; patients recovered more quickly when they had perfect faith in the
physician. So who took fright or even noticed when the kindly, overworked healer
became priest and despot? (Moore and Bradford 1959a: 16)
In the disciplinary regime imposed by the medarchy, personal freedom and the
role of the individual in facing illness is suppressed, proving the risks of reducing
the experience of illness to a purely clinical event. The power of medicine to
control the body is oriented to the production of medicalised bodies that are no
longer perceived as a threat to social stability. Preventive and protective health
behaviours, thus, are promoted by both medicine and society to encourage bodily
control and surveillance. In Caduceus Wild these measures reflect not only the role
of medicine in the conservation of health, but also the social and cultural models
of corporeality, such as the prohibition of “all hair below the eyelashes as
unsanitary”, enforcing “the use of depilatories on the entire body” (Moore and
Bradford 1959a: 30). The duty of the medarchy is to both force and help citizens
accommodate to the norms of this utopian society also by using medicine to
impose social control:
Performing ‘indicated’ hysterectomies, sterilizations, abortions. Adjusting Patients
to a society that may not be to their taste, conditions they might improve, handicaps
they could overcome. Quieting the indignant with psycho-pharmacology and the
outraged with electro-tranquilization. Forcing the dissident to testify against
themselves with parapentathol. Killing those who have ‘outlived their social
usefulness’, or suffer prolonged pain — or perhaps have maladies they are
incompetent to diagnose. (Moore and Bradford 1959a: 37)
It is necessary to note that in this medical regime medical knowledge and power is
restricted, despite the social expectations regarding the biomedical sciences as
infallible and unambiguous. Yet, regardless of the extent of the social control
medicine can exert, even in fiction, this form of power presents structural limits,
for, despite modern medicine’s pursuit of “technical-scientific approach to illness”,
the belief of unending progress and the promise of perfection is only a myth
(Mordacci 1998: 28).
In Caduceus Wild, medicine promises health, but in exchange patients must accept
control by medical rule. However, it is important to note that despite the
dominance of the medical sciences over society, in the medarchy the medical
profession seems to be decentralised, for the actual control of the population is
exercised by different disciplinary agents:
When the doctors took over, it was just because they were needed. But you can’t run
a society with just doctors and nurses and laboratories. You have to have discipline,
if only to keep the Patients in line. Hence the orderlies. But the orderlies were no
good for checking charts, spotting non-cooperative individuals, cranks. So we got
the trained Medical Police. But what could MPs do about mallies who conspired,
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propagandized, actively resisted? Answer: the subcutes. (Moore and Bradford
1959a: 39)
The healthfare state depicted in the novel certainly retains the original connotations
of the panopticon described by Bentham in the context of the penal institution,
where disciplinary officers were responsible for the surveillance and control of
prisoners. Thus, “those who become orderlies, MPs or subcutes — they’d have
been cops or prison guards” (1959a: 38). The “orderlies” were the forces in
charge of maintaining the social order by inspecting and identifying those suspected
of non-compliance with medical laws. The Medical Police were agents identified
by wearing a black pin with a caduceus. The term “subcute” is an acronym of
“Surgical - Bactericidal - Custodial Technicians”, described as “more dangerous
than orderlies”, for they act undercover agents of sorts, as they do not wear
uniforms or pins, as their name suggests —probably referring to the medical term
“subcutaneous”— meaning that they are beneath the surface of the medarchical
system. With these representatives of the medarchy, the panopticon becomes
tangible for the Citizen-Patient. As Cyrus notes, “[n]ot caduceus, but the
ophthalmoscope ought to be the ubiquitous symbol of the medarchy. Sees all, knows
everything, peers into insides. Big Brother, MD” (1959a: 8, emphasis in the original).
The ophthalmoscope, however, does not solely represent the everywhereness of
the clinical gaze, but also knowledge, control and the ability to see hidden truths.
Despite the parallelism with the penal panopticon mentioned above, the medical
panopticon in Caduceus Wild has its own particularities. Unlike the penitentiary
system, the medarchy is depicted as a form of dictatorship where the rights of
patients were restricted, as their only obligation was to get well and remain healthy:
Laws were laws, but the lawbreaker was no longer a criminal, able to hold some
remnant of pride, to pay a debt to society by serving a sentence. Now he was just
another maladjusted individual, protected by no legal presumption of innocence,
but having testimony wrenched from him by a medical examiner whose opinion
carried the ultimate weight with judges and juries, even in the face of old-fashioned
evidence. (Moore and Bradford 1959c: 83)
The aim of the medarchy, thus, is to produce socially useful subjects. This approach
echoes Talcott Parsons’ structural-functionalist model of health developed in the
1950s. According to this model, illness is conceived as a social deviance in which
subjects temporarily adopt the “sick role”, a status that exempts them from social
obligations and expectations regarding normal roles (Williams 2005: 124). The
normative expectations related to the sick role are a form of social control, since
ill subjects are forced to abandon their other roles in order to focus on the goal
of re-establishing health. Following Varul’s ideas, “substituting the multiplicity of
everyday roles, the sick role bridges periods of incapability by establishing a single
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role that enabled conformity within the deviance of illness” (2010: 76). In the
medarchy, the adoption of the patient role, not as negotiated between the
individual and society but as imposed by the medical establishment, ensures that
subjects accommodate to the social expectations and behaviours as a preventive
mechanism to maintain social stability. This necessarily involves the loss of
individuality and autonomy of patients, tipping the scales in favour of public health
over personal freedom. Additionally, in contrast to the sick role, which is only a
transitory status before the restitution of normality, the patient role in Caduceus
Wild is actually the representation of the Parsonian “health role”, which is ongoing,
for the healthy person is expected to be “adhering to a regime and deferring to
competent authority for the definition of that regime” (Frank 1991: 208). From a
contextual perspective, it is also important to remark that Parsons constructed the
notion of the sick role upon the coalescence of the Calvinist and capitalist North
American scheme of thought that emerged at the turn of the 21st century, which
is also tangible in Moore and Bradford’s novel. The characters live in a society
where “youthfulness, activism, and independence” are the most valued attributes
of citizenship (Turner 2001: 261). This model thus conjures an archetype of
normality and health as the foundation of “the world of strength, the positive
(valued) body, performance and production, the non-disabled, and young adults”
(Wendell 1996: 40). Since the world is made bearing in mind an able-bodied,
male, young subject, it can be said that deviations from health are certainly social
constructions. In other words, it is society which produces maladjusted individuals.
In the medarchy this is expressed in the pathologisation of behaviours considered
as deviant. As Dr Tree, defender of the medarchy, explains to Cyrus, the Ama has
the moral obligation to protect collective well-being by controlling and guiding
every aspect of the individual’s life:
You can’t afford to let the sentimentalist keep his deformed child, or grieve
excessively over his poor old mother who ought to have been euthanized years ago,
or worry himself into a breakdown over the possibility of being cuckolded — because
every one of these ‘private’ concerns touches the general welfare somewhere.
Suffering, discontent, maladjustment, can be spread as surely as typhoid or smallpox.
And carriers must be isolated and cured. Or at least have his malady arrested. It’s the
only ultimately humane course. (Moore and Bradford 1959a: 69)
Patients are in a constant state of control, as the main task of the orderlies, subcutes
and MPs is to identify, capture and cure the maladjusted, that is, “those who
refused to adjust themselves to the sane and sanitary regimen of the medarchy”
(Moore and Bradford 1959b: 62). The three main characters, Cyrus, Victoria and
Henry, were part of the subgroup of mallies, who “could do little more than rebel,
and try to convince the majority that the rule of caduceus wild robbed man of all
dignity” (Moore and Bradford 1959b: 62). Yet, apart from the mallies, another
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group named “mercifuls” are also targeted by the medarchy. The mercifuls were
always “on the lookout for suffering people they could ‘help’”, as they believed
that euthanasia was the only way to relieve some patients of their misery, a stance
that they regarded as a way to oppose the Ama, but which in reality only reflected
the acceptance of the actions of the medarchy by only “palliating it, instead of
removing the cause” (Moore and Bradford 1959c: 102). The mercifuls, in a
certain sense, consider that subjects can recover their dignity through death, seen
as a way of escaping the disciplinary medical system. The mallies, in contrast,
aimed to destroy the medarchy by not complying with its rules and prescriptions.
Despite their ideological differences, however, if captured by the forces of order,
both mercifuls and mallies were not jailed but “cured, robbed of their memories
and individualities” (Moore and Bradford 1959a: 6). In this sense, like other forms
of dictatorial regimes, the medarchy, by imposing a normative model of behaviour
and health, has the power to depersonalise citizens:
Angers, passions, ideals, hopes, determinations, fears. All urgency, all the inner
burning, all caring wiped out by an impersonal current carried in an impersonal
electrode manipulated by an impersonal technician employed by a benevolent and
compassionate society. Because you were part of that society, and if you were diseased
the entire body was afflicted. (Moore and Bradford 1959a: 26)
In this dystopic world, to be cured, necessarily involves being stripped of one’s
individuality, something not different from the situation undergone by patients in
modern medical practices. The hierarchical relationship in the clinical setting
provokes the anonymisation, or even the dehumanisation, of the patient, regarded
not as a subject, but rather as a body needing treatment. As authors of the positivist
medical discourse, doctors are able to establish a relationship of power with
patients, which is clearly reflected in the symbolism in the clinical context noted by
Erving Goffman in his essays on the medical practice in mental institutions: “First,
you can certainly tell the players by the uniforms they wear, with varying insignia
(some subtle, like in certain institutions the not wearing of a uniform) distinguishing
the ranks. Patients, on the other hand, are, in all senses of the word, often stripped
of their identity”, which is hidden under a hospital gown (Zola 1986: 214). This
dichotomy between the identifiable roles of the staff and the anonymised status of
patients is mirrored in Caduceus Wild, where the agents of the Ama are recognised
by their uniforms or their pinned caduceus, whose colours indicate their rank. Like
in the reality of modern medical practice, this visual differentiation helps to identify
the agents within the system, fostering a sense of order and hierarchy and
reinforcing the subordination of the patient to medical power.
The medical panopticon in Caduceus Wild also reproduces the religious
connotations of the original panopticon penitentiary. Bentham’s surveillance
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system was based on a “hierarchy of three stages” with “a secular simile of God,
angels and man” (Evans 1971: 22). In the medarchy, the same hierarchical system
is tangible, with medical professionals being considered demigods; the MPs,
subcutes and orderlies as guardians (a title the mercifuls aimed to supplant by
being “compassionate” to patients in suffering); and the patients as mortals
needing guidance and salvation after a global catastrophe. In fact, the medarchy is
grounded in the same principle of Bentham’s ideation of the panopticon, defined
as a “system that provides the basis for a rational order of things in a situation that,
without such careful circumscriptions, was often rendered into a diabolical chaos
by the irrationally disposed passions of men” (Evans 1971: 22). The mallies and
their rebelliousness against the medical establishment, thus, were not considered
“merely subversive — they were virtually blasphemous” (Moore and Bradford
1959a: 14). In the fictional world ruled by the Ama, the medarchy transcends the
system of power to become the object of religious devotion with the foundation of
the “Church of the Caduceus”, a consequence of the idolisation of the medical
profession by patients who “had been enamored of medicine as an ultimate end
and implemented their worship by annoying doctors beyond normal expectation”
(Moore and Bradford 1959a: 25). The transformation of this hierarchical social
and political system into a theological system reflects the internalisation of the
discipline or dogmas of the Ama in a fraction of the population, the self-proclaimed
“Caduceans”. Thus, “[w]ith spiritual strength added to the medarchy’s material
appeals, the healthfare state would be just about invincible” (Moore and Bradford
1959a: 25). The supreme object of worship for this congregation was the spiritual,
immortal and unchanging figure of the “Great Physician”, to whom Caduceans
prayed. This veneration of the medical profession is clearly a projection of the
imprint that religion has left on modern medical culture, for “Great Physician” is,
in fact, a title popularly attributed to Jesus by Christians to praise his role as a
healer of both physical and spiritual sickness. More recently, fictional religious
discourses have been articulated around doctors, who are seen as the only providers
of health and well-being. This sense of devotion is the subject of religious hymns
about the myth of infallibility and unlimited knowledge of the medical practice:
“There is only one way,/ There is only one way/ To be healthy and happy:/ ‘See the
doctor’, we say” (Moore and Bradford 1959a: 48, emphasis in the original); “Rock
the surg’ry prescribed for me/ Heal me like the Great MD;/ Heal my bone and
insides;/ All health in Medicine resides” (Moore and Bradford 1959a: 49, emphasis
in the original). These hymns also served to reinforce the indisputability of the
power of the medarchy: “When the charts are read up yonder, I’ll be there;/ Vaccines,
antitoxins, x-rays everywhere./ When my chart is read up yonder, let the Great
Physician ponder./ I’ll be healthy, I’ll be happy” (Moore and Bradford 1959a: 52,
emphasis in the original). Additionally, these chants aimed to reflect the very
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nature of the disciplinary power of the medical profession, whose actions were
justified by their authority to act in the name of health: “Shots will help me, this I
know,/ Because the doctor tells me so;/ He is wise and kind and strong;/ He will cure
me all life long.// Shots will help me,/ Checks will guard me,/ Pills will cure me —/
Doctor tells me so” (Moore and Bradford 1959a: 65, emphasis in the original).
Caduceus Wild highlights the connection between medicine and religion; even
today the medical profession is believed to be a response to a “calling” like
clergymen’s vocation — or nuns’ vocation in the case of nurses. Considering
doctors as objects of worship, in this sense, may point to a change in the perception
of medical practice, confronting the pragmatic vision of medicine as a purely
mechanical or technical science and the belief that “medical treatment should
entail a nearly mystical bond of healing accompanied by exalted human sentiments”
(Osmond 1980: 555). Yet, in Caduceus Wild, the deification of doctors, the
devotion for their workings and the reverence paid to their tools to heal are not
contradictory or incompatible, as the hymns quoted above express. The idealisation
and idolisation of the medical profession fuelled by the myth of infallibility seems
to be based on the patient’s blind trust or, as this novel suggests, faith in healers.
Contemplating these forms of social control and (self-)discipline that transcend
the clinical space, the three main characters struggle to elude the rule of the
caduceus in a world where the line between healing and control becomes
ambiguous. The ending of the story, however, fails to encourage real social change
in the real world, as the three main characters reclaim their freedom by fleeing the
medarchical system rather than dismantling it. Yet, despite its straightforward plot,
Caduceus Wild encourages readers to question the extent of surveillance necessary
for societal well-being or the cost of enforcing biopower. This story invites readers
to reflect on the balance between authority and individual agency, echoing
Foucault’s timeless theorisations about power dynamics. More importantly, this
work of fiction questions the meaning of the role of the patient, traditionally
regarded as a passive recipient of medical decisions. The determination of the main
characters to reject this system by not trusting medicine blindly points to the
importance of the re-humanisation of medical practice, which should regard
patients as individuals rather than as sites of (social) control.
5. Conclusions: Speculative Realities
Caduceus Wild encourages readers to question the nature of biomedical authority
by imagining a world where medical prescriptions are law. The counter-narrative
presented by the main characters, particularly Cyrus, challenges the
conceptualisation of medicine as a supreme science and the idealisation of the
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medical profession, pointing to the potential dangers of a system governed by an
unruly or wild —as the title of the novel suggests— medical power. As part of the
dystopic genre, this speculative novel relies on the power of fear to encourage
resistance to the status quo. Yet, although this fictional story portrays Moore’s
interpretation of the anxieties that dominated North American society in the late
1950s, the reading of this text in the post-pandemic era reveals that the essence of
those tensions rooted in biopower are ever-present.
In this context, the genre of speculative fiction serves as an instrument to explore
alternative realities where societal norms are subverted by characters who reveal
the injustice and oppression exerted by power structures presented as normalised
and beneficial. As seen in this critical analysis, Moore captures this collision
between utopianism and dystopian resistance, two stances embodied, respectively,
by the defenders of the medarchy as the ideal form of government, and the main
characters who rebel against this system. Readers navigate the world of the
medarchy through the eyes of three mallies who represent the disruption of order
and stability in a society that fears individuality. This novel, in this regard, confirms
the value of the dystopian genre, as the view of the rebellious main characters
counterbalances the utopian reality presented as benign and inoffensive. Dystopia,
as McAlear notes, “prevents Utopia from becoming totalitarian spatially”, for it
creates “the possibility of redescribing any system as fearful” (2010: 37). Caduceus
Wild certainly accomplishes its dystopian purpose, situating a fictional utopian
system in America, where dystopian resistances emerge within a totalitarian regime
that transforms the mallies into marginalised insiders that threaten the dominant
ideology. Despite its lack of popularity and influence in the literary and academic
world, Caduceus Wild ignites a debate about the impact and limits of biopower,
proving that dystopian fictions function as political allegories that forewarn of
darker futures and call for action and agency.
Acknowledgements
This work has been supported by the post-doctoral fellowship programme
“Margarita Salas” for the training of young PhD holders within the framework of
grants for the requalification of the Spanish university system, awarded by the
Ministry of Universities of Spain and financed by the European Union
(NextGenerationEU) to conduct a research stay at the University of Málaga. The
author of this essay also wants to acknowledge her participation in the funded
research project Illness in the Age of Extinction: Anglophone Narratives of Personal
and Planetary Degradation (2000-2020) (Ref. PID2019-109565RB-I00/
AEI/10.13039/501100011033).
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Received: 02/04/2024
Accepted: 20/11/2024
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